


Rule of Three

by regnant



Series: Of Stag's Velvet and Lion's Blood [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Addiction, Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Child Death, Consensual Incest, Domestic Violence, F/M, Forced Marriage, Get ready to cry forever, House Lannister, Lannicest, Lannister, Lannistercest, Organized crime families, Sexual Content, Sibling Incest, Twincest, Tywin as a mob boss is his own warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-08-23 09:02:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8321980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regnant/pseuds/regnant
Summary: In modern Westeros, the Lannister family has a stake in most every major business, legitimate or otherwise. Cersei, daughter of Tywin, has been forced into a horrific marriage to Robert Baratheon to solidify financial ties and calm tensions between rivaling families. When things hit their lowest point and she is forced to leave, breaking the arrangements made by her father, many seek to depose the Lannisters and usurp their money and power, but when you bet against the lions, you lose more than your purse.





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Separation.  
> Memories.  
> Harmony.

Sighing inwardly, Jaime nodded his thanks to the flight attendant as she brought him the ibuprofen he'd requested along with a small cup of water. Even in first class, flying most always gave him a headache. There was always a wailing babe, an over talkative pair of neighbors on the opposite side of the aisle, a bright, explosion-heavy in-flight film to detract from the sleep taunting from just behind pale lids.

All of those burdens and more were bearable when he had his other half with which to share them. He could easily tune out the noises around them with her lilting voice ghosting promises at his ear of what was to come once they got back to the house or the hotel room, her cruel japes at the expense of the other travelers, though those were often significantly less quiet and careful, to his dismay. The best consolations were the subtle caresses of her fingers circling against his own, the brush of her lips at his cheek, temple, jaw, the corner of his mouth, even a dart of tongue on skin if they felt particularly daring, the scraping of blushed and aurified lacquered claws against the back of his neck, as gentle or harsh as he liked, when no one was paying any mind to the two of them, and sometimes continuing once someone _did_ turn to look, too, especially if they'd gotten into a bottle of wine. She loved to make a game of watching the onlookers squirm in their seats, turn away at the instant of eye contact, or sometimes even stare harder, _which is always all the more interesting._ They sometimes even played at guessing who would react which way. _"Do you think they know who we are, sweet brother?"_ she'd coo as she traced patterns on his thigh with a nimble finger. _"I'm sure they've at least guessed that we're a pair of twins by now."_ She'd grown to become something of an exhibitionist, just a bit, now that the consequences weren't half as harsh if they were noticed. Amidst his sensuous thoughts, Jaime found himself relishing the thought of even her most innocent touch.

He missed her. He always did.

Perhaps the most insufferable part of all was the inevitable command from the captain over the loudspeakers informing every passenger that it was time to put their devices in airplane mode, dooming the younger twin to complete solitude. Even to type to her would have made it a little better. Any other time that they had to be separated, there were written snippets and snapshots of the events, meals, outfits of each day, _I miss you_ s, occasionally even videos of the silliest things that the kids were finding to occupy their time, chocolate-milk-mustached Myrcellas skateboarding across the asphalt in windblown pink dresses, flower-picking Tommens chasing breathlessly after them, wielding the gold-petaled gifts like Valyrian steel. _"Look at what your children are doing."_ Countless iterations of their little family existed in those moments, each catalogued day like its own universe at his fingertips. That was the thing about flying: It brought them together again considerably faster, but there was a certain icy interim of absolutely nothing at all. If there were to be no new memories made until he was off this Seven-forsaken plane, he'd just have to dream them up on his own.

His eyes shifted back to the flight attendant sashaying off to her next task.

"Ah, my lady?" he called out before she was too far gone.

She swiftly made her way back to Jaime's seat. People in positions of service always did; even alone, even with just about as much anonymity as he ever possessed, they seemed to know where the money was. _Perhaps if I stopped letting Cersei dress me in oxford shirts and gold,_ and then, _she'd hate that._

"Did you require something else of me, my lord?"

He nearly snorted at her response; in fact, it did come out halfway. He greedily sucked in a breath through his nose against the sound and did his best to ignore the flirtatious tone in the woman's voice. "Yes. The tallest, strongest, sweetest glass of Arbor Gold that you've got on this plane. And if you refill it at my pleasure, there's fifty dragons in it for you."

The word _dragons_ seemed to light a fire in her eyes as though they were discussing the hell-breathed beasts from millennia ago rather than simple paper money. "Right away."

Jaime chuckled for a moment, thinking that if Cersei were here, she'd revile the idea of him drinking sweet white wine, _and the stewardess' way of paying such particular attention,_ perhaps even the smell of it in her vicinity. She much preferred dry Dornish red. Cersei was not here, though, and he'd make do with this whole wretched flight as it pleased him. When the young woman brought him the glass he'd requested, he sipped at it dutifully a few times before shaking his head, _let it be over with,_ and downing the rest of the glass whole. He shut his eyes and bid the wine relax him as he had hoped that it would. He focused on the darkness ahead of his lidded gaze, the hum of the plane's engines around him, the two dabs of lavender oil he'd left behind each ear, the aroma of it gracing the valley just under his nose. For just a moment, that way, there was peace, even if he was torn in half, alone. It was _their_ darkness behind his eyes, eternal, ongoing, amassing, like the Lannister empire. The hums were as _her_ breath might have been at his neck as she slipped into a contented slumber beside him, and _her_ scent made its way into his nose, gracing the otherwise stale, recycled air with poise. He let thoughts of the two of them together again carry him softly off to sleep.

When Jaime opened his eyes again, the plane was on the ground. He was one of the last passengers to get out of his seat. Gruffly, annoyed at being driven from a pleasant rest, he clambered to his feet and hastily took hold of his carry-on duffel. The flight attendant flashed a knowing smile at him as he strode toward her. _She never even had to refill my glass,_ he thought, and, suddenly in a giving mood, he slipped her the paper bill that he had promised anyway. _It simply did not please me to ask any further service of her._ "Lannisters pay their debts, my lady," he smirked down at her surprised face. "Every child knows that."

He could feel his chest swelling with pride as he made his way off the plane and toward the airport building. He strutted eminently toward the baggage claim, observing the common people as they groveled out of his way, all the while never slowing his pace. They were small, graceless, frothy, and worst of all, they were abating his progress in reuniting with the only person in this place that truly mattered.

He knew that she would be waiting for him on the other side of the gate, but no amount of premeditation quite prepared him for the sight of her. Even now, nearing their middle age, she was positively electrifying, the energy tying them together all but tactile. There she stood, cutting a regal and formidable figure among the peasants and peddlers, aureate pixie hair sticking out in every direction like savannah grass from under a gilded headband not unlike a crown. A slinky crimson tank top dexterously enveloped her top half, the drop neckline pooling at her breasts in reverence alongside her favorite golden lion necklace. Black skinny jeans greedily hugged like lusty hands at each and every curve of her long legs. Her favorite pair of rose gold spike heels raked imposingly at the ground beneath her feet; they would have been surely welcomed by most any man as an instrument in his death, were it at her hands. The top half of her house sigil tattoo was exposed for all the world to see on her right foot, the lion leaping out from inside of her shoe in undaunted glory across a veldt of alabaster skin. Jaime's golden thumb absentmindedly lumbered over the back of his left hand to stroke at the analogous illustration there, and for a moment, it was like touching her from across the room, as though his fingers were wrapped about her heel just as they were when he came into the world. In her own lofty fingers, manicured in yellow and rose gold, she held up a small white paper sign. Two words dripped balletically across the page in vermillion ink.

_"Ser Jaime."_

Tommen and Myrcella were in view at her feet, racing about and laughing, an amalgam of rushing limbs, startled sounds, and joined fingers as they clattered to the floor. He could see her bending down and telling them to calm down, relax, although she must have known they'd be much too excited for any of that in a place as lively as this. Though he was happy for their presence, Jaime almost didn't see them.

Their first eye contact raised most every hair on his skin to attention. One corner of her rouged bow mouth turned up into a half-smile when their gazes met. He closed the remaining distance between them with a newfound fervor as leather loafers clicked against the white tile beneath.

He wanted to grasp her by the chin and tilt her face up toward his for a kiss, nosy onlookers and little birds be damned, wanted their fingers of silvered and gilded skin to clasp and mingle like cream and honey, flowing infinitely, bathed in sunlight, but _no, the children are here,_ and his arms found their way around her waist in a more acceptable sort of embrace. His mouth formed into a true smile for the first time in at least a week as he felt her arms wrap back around him. His face found its way into the crook just between her neck and shoulder, only for a second, and he stole the kiss he was craving in the form of a soundless press of his lips to the skin there. "Queen Cersei," he addressed her in a flash of mock seriousness, laughing and pulling away to have another look at her. It had been her nickname as long as he could remember.

"Ser Uncle!"

Jaime's gaze turned down toward the tiny Tommen pulling at his sleeve. He bent to take the boy and his elder sister into either arm for a hug, mussing their blonde hair, more than likely to the chagrin of their mother stood above them. At only four and five, Myrcella and Tommen were sponges, holding onto everything they were shown and taught, and Cersei's nickname for Jaime had quickly rubbed off onto their youngest child in its way.

Though it was sweet, sweeter than the beets that Tommen always refused to eat, Jaime had to actively resist the pang of anger and resentment threatening to plow through his newfound good mood. If Cersei was a queen, their children a little prince and princess, he was their king. Or rather, _he should have been,_ but he certainly wasn't. He was only a knight, only an uncle, bearing a shield rather than a crown, gilded steel but never gold. Their little pride was only halfway his, and Jaime often wondered if he would ever have any sort of real relationship with his children, if he would ever be able to sit them down and make them understand when they were older, _to take the title that should have always been mine._ Cersei always told him in his moments of doubt that what he outwardly did for them now mattered more than whatever he was supposed to _be_ , before or otherwise, but part of Jaime, the darker part that he kept bound beneath the sarcastic facade on the surface, believed that, at least to some degree, she was only appeasing him.

_"They will know that you protected them."_

Resentment was not for now, though, and not ever, really, not for true. Even if it had to be this way, at least for now, at least while they were too young for explanations, they were together, content, safe. Cersei would drive them home, and he could even drowse again on the way if he liked. There would be stories and gifts from his travels, and the children always loved him for those. They would eventually head off to bed, too, and they would kiss and make love and _I love you_ until they were finally sated, at least for the moment. They'd sleep together, and wake up together, early, of course, lest the children find them in an indelicate state, have coffee in their underwear, _black, she always wants it black now,_ and it would be everything that he had ever craved all those years, so how could he even think to complain about it now?

Pushing the pressing scorn and entitlement aside as they walked to the parking lot, he willed himself to appreciate what he did have, hard as that might be for someone that had always had everything. Jaime allowed himself to conjure to mind times infinitely darker in comparison, fiery phone calls, long and lingering laconicism, somber separation, blood and bruises.

He recalled Cersei's marriage to Robert Baratheon.


	2. Thrice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Compromising positions.  
> Black coffee.  
> Three words spoken three times.

Three calls.

No answer.

Three knocks.

_No answer._

Of course he had come over. Of course he had let himself inside. Of course, he had a key, didn't he? She'd given him one what seemed like ages ago, the first time it had happened. _"Just in case,"_ she'd said. _"Follow the rule of three."_

After the bolts of the locks had clicked and rolled together, graciously granting him access to the other side of the doorway, the quiet that they left behind in the foyer was deafening. Tommen and Myrcella were nowhere to be seen nor heard, asleep, he assumed, he _hoped_ , though a handful of their toys still splayed recklessly at the foot of the staircase. Myrcella's stuffed dragon, Balerion, terrorized one of Tommen's dolls, a princess crowned with flowers, with the threat of his flame breath in the creeping dark as she cowered behind the still-raised shield of a nearby knight, felled to his death on the carpet.

Jaime crept further into the house, closing the heavy double doors behind him as quietly as he could. Near the kitchen doorway, Cersei's rose gold smartphone lay on its face on the floor. Upon picking it up, Jaime could see that the screen was shattered beyond repair, let alone functioning. _No wonder she didn't answer._ Two feet or so from the damaged device, her wedding ring brooded alone, discarded on the cold tile. He almost smirked at the sight despite the seriousness of it all. He closed his eyes and indulged himself for a moment, picturing how she must have thrown it at him, the rage painting her pale face. Inside the kitchen, food still cluttered the counter, half-prepared, some red sauce spilled and dried like coagulated blood in an arc along the cabinets and floor, vegetables in various states of chopping and dicing haphazardly discarded alongside the bowls and cutting board.

There were no other obvious signs of life, even when he shined the flashlight of his cell phone about the halls. The house hardly looked lived in, and the shelves and tables were even getting dusty, suggesting that the maids had been sent away. _There is something going on that Cersei didn't want them to see, but what?_ His questions seemed to resound throughout the rooms, bouncing off of the high-set tin ceilings and back into his mind.

He finally came upon her on the bathroom floor, nursing a half empty, skull-shaped bottle of absinthe, the one she kept locked away in the cabinet behind the household cleaners, _"for emergencies,"_ though he was never quite sure what emergency required a salve of liquor. _Tyrion would know better than me._ It was a wonder the two of them hadn't always gotten along.

He'd assumed she would have gotten rid of it when she'd gone in for her thirty days. He swore silently, musing, _but of course I wouldn't know, would I? I wasn't there, I should have been there. She's my sister, at the end of the day._ Her head was thrown back to one side against the tub, and Jaime could see the white, printed plastic of a pack of frozen peas protruding from under her hair, which was oddly tucked to one side under her neck.

"Cersei."

Her head swung lazily toward the sound of her own name. That was when he noticed her eye, the hulking purple bruise imposing on the beauty of her face. The golden hair disappearing into the taupe of the shower curtain behind her had actually been shorn away, he realized. It hardly touched her shoulders now. His eyes moved from her face to survey the whole of the room. A jagged mess of broken gold pooled around the woman's bare legs in defeat amid a rose gold chain that had no doubt adored the tresses just hours before. A large steel kitchen knife glinted menacingly in the fluorescent light. An orange pharmaceutical bottle lay lidless next to the hair on the floor, the white contents scattered on the black tile like the first snowflakes at the end of summer.

_You better not have, Cersei._

" _Jaime_...?"

His name fell with incredulity in kind from lips stained near as green as their eyes from the liquor. The sound pulled him to his knees, and they finally joined together there on the cold tile floor, a seeping, crawling thing once again. His arms wrapped around her, trying to seal the warmth, the fierceness, inside of her, to keep it from escaping. It was a task in and of itself, what with the way that _he_ seemed hellbent on tearing it out. For a long time, they didn't move, didn't need to move, and he dared not do anything but relish the sound of her breathing against him, the feeling of her heart beating in time with his own.

_Things could have gone so much worse._

Just then, she pulled back to look at him, two pairs of green eyes colliding, his tired ones poison and rage, her bloodshot own absinthe and grenadine. They didn't need to speak to understand each other; they never had, and he felt flooded with a thousand things at the notion that he was falling into how things had always been. She'd become the part of him he hated that he needed, but yet here he was, on the bathroom floor at _her_ house, showing up entirely unannounced rather than at _her_ invitation.

Even after everything, these months of radio silence, he wanted to be here, and she wanted him here, and somehow that was all that mattered, at least for right now. The agreement was silent, only ocular, but it was there.

She sighed, moving away, and for a moment, he worried, perhaps hoped, that she was going to push him back, tell him to leave, but it became obvious she was moving for the toilet to the side of them. He knew he should have expected this what with how empty the bottle was, _and it was probably full when she started drinking, too,_ but some part of him had hoped that it wouldn't come to this, that he would never see her so broken again.

Perhaps that was his burden, though. Perhaps it was hers to be strong for too long, to hold up their little pride ninety-nine percent of the time, and his to pick up the pieces when the weight finally crushed her, to glue her back together, much like the bottle next to her would need to be because her leg had felled it, shattering the crystal skull into a thousand pieces.

Quickly and easily, with the grace of a great cat, he batted her leg away from the mess of glass lest the edges glimmer green and red like the elder twin's eye already did. Sniffles and coughs resounded throughout the room, and he moved to grasp at her hair, _at what is left of it, Seven Hells, Cersei, what happened to you?_

Slender arms, _much more so than they used to be,_ reached up to grip the sides of the toilet seat in front of her, and he could see lilacs blooming up and down the right one, elbow to shoulder, pollinated with little crimson insects tasting at the skin. Her fingernails had been the culprit that cut the red into the flesh, he knew. If she'd been drunk enough, and he'd been late enough, the skin would have been much worse off, scratched, scalded, sliced, scrubbed, scarring be damned because _"I always want his handprints off me, one way or another."_

Cersei wouldn't let anyone hurt Cersei except for Cersei. _Aside from occasionally me, when the mood strikes,_ the blonde man thought smirkingly, but of course this was nothing like that.

"It's alright, Cersei, you're alright."

His long, rough fingers wound their way into the nest of short curls, keeping them clean and dry set against the polluting sickness that would soon hang in the air. It most certainly was _not_ alright. He could hardly believe that she had done this again, after all of her hard work, after going into rehab and getting better. Tyrion had even said that she was only drinking wine with dinner now. Even if it had been from a distance, he had been proud of her, and now he was just disappointed, in a twisted sort of way. Too much wine would have been one thing, but drinking liquor from the bottle, taking pills _when you had just gotten sixty days and hung the chip in the car for the kids to see_ and going on a bender was a completely different animal altogether. She had only even begun to depend on the pills to function when _he_ did this to her, _because he hurt her badly enough to warrant their prescription in the first place,_ and thinking of that, Jaime wasn't sure who he was more angry with, the lioness or the boar that she called a husband.

Anger was not for now, though. Even he knew that. Cersei needed him, and she was much too far gone to be any use in an argument, at any rate.

When she was done, and the sounds subsided, her breathing slowing to normal, he went to turn on the shower for her. He knew it always helped when she got like this. She'd want to get in clothing and all; He didn't even bother insisting otherwise. He angled the head so that the water was spraying toward the wall and helped her sit inside. _Why do I still do this for you?_ he wondered, but of course, he knew.

He watched for a moment as she hooked both thumbs into the waistband of the Myrish lace garment between her slim thighs, tugging it down around her ankles and then hanging them out of the oversized tub before shifting over to lie under the silver streams. Any other time, the sight of water beading on her naked skin might have excited him, but not now, not after everything, not like this, and he truly hated that.

She was sighing softly, _the warm water must feel nice,_ and he felt glad that comfort still existed for her in things like that, that she could find normalcy in the midst of madness. He observed her dozing there for a little while before interrupting, holding a white paper cup mildly near her face.

"Swish, darling."

She nodded breathily, taking the paper cup into a shaky hand, drinking in the toxic green mouthwash, pursing her lips at the intensity, and then spitting it out some seconds later. Perhaps spitting wasn't quite the right word; that took effort. Really, she simply let the liquid fall out of her bow mouth, gracelessly, apparently not caring that it would stain the dusky pink tunic shirt that she wore, even though he knew it had been a favorite. Then again, it was already ruined with blood and liquor and sick.

He hoped that she knew that the rest of her was not ruined that way, that there was still a chance.

Stealthily, after she had closed her eyes to rest them, he scooped up the pills into the bottle, closed and pocketed it. He opened the door, and when her head perked up, held up a finger as if to say, _I'll be back._

Once in the kitchen, he surveyed the label on the pill bottle. They were Robert's pills for his back pain, ibuprofen with codeine. The idiot knew he wasn't supposed to have any kind of painkillers in the house, didn't he? It was the injury he gave her that had even gotten her started on the pills in the first place, and recalling that made Jaime even angrier. He spilled the pills onto the granite surface, counting, and found that only two were missing. _Maybe I misjudged her,_ he thought guiltily. _Maybe she took one. Maybe she is actually in a lot of pain... Or maybe not._ She still should have known better than to mix opiates with alcohol. He'd have to make sure she stayed awake, then. Set to his task, he found the broom and dustpan there along with some towels, poured out some water for her to drink, and started a pot of coffee for them to share. Tonight would prove to be longer than he had expected.

He returned to observe her scrubbing at the marked skin of her upper right arm. The soap perfumed the air with vanilla; It was quaint mixing along with her usual smell of lavender. He quickly set about getting rid of the mess on the floor while she busied herself washing. As he carelessly cast it aside from the broken things, the gold chain slicked like a snake down into the bowl of the porcelain sink. The two seemed to finish at the same time, and he helped her from the tub into a towel and onto the rug on the bathroom floor. She tugged off the sopping wet shirt and bra as he tried his best not to look too hard, and once she was mostly dry, he removed his own T-shirt, _her favorite old shirt of mine,_ placing it in her hands to put on.

That earned him a small smile. Jaime liked that, if he wouldn't admit it, even to himself: These days, her smiles were hard to come by.

For a moment, he wanted to draw her face to his for a kiss. He almost did, but _no, not now, not...yet?_ When she had righted herself again, he led her into the kitchen, lifting her with ease to sit upon the clean side of the counter. Conveniently, the coffee had just finished brewing.

He poured her a steaming cup over two cubes of ice and a spoonful of sugar, holding it out to her.

"Drink."

She cocked a brow up at him. It was the only reply she gave.

"I know you don't like it black, but it will help you sober up, stay awake."

"And what if I don't want to?" she lilted back at him quietly, swinging her legs widely. Her heels bounced softly, _thud thud thud,_ against the doors of the cabinets beneath.

"You need to," he said, finally touching her face lightly, only a brush of his fingertips on her cheek. "I need you to."

She rolled her eyes, more of a lolling motion than anything, but ultimately surrendered and took the cup of coffee, drinking deeply, warming herself once again. Her free hand closed over his on her face.

"Thank you," she muttered, not meeting his gaze.

"Cersei Lannister? Thanking _me_? You are drunk."

She glowered at him with as much menace as she could muster. "If I am so _awful_ ," she bit back, letting go of the fingers tasting at her skin, "I'll remind you that I didn't exactly expect to see you tonight."

There was nothing that he could say to that. Ungrateful as she may have been, she wasn't quite wrong. He did his best to ignore her tone, as he often did. No point to getting offended over something that was not like to change in this lifetime.

There was a beat before he decided that it was time to get to the point.

"Tell me... Tell me what he did."

They both winced at the mention of him. It was an unwritten rule between the two that they never mentioned him, even now that things were so different, when they were alone, unless it was absolutely necessary.

It was necessary. Her glassy eyes never left his as she spoke.

"Cella heard us arguing this time. She... tried to... He was going to hit her! And then I got... It doesn't matter. I just couldn't let him touch her." Her inebriated eyes filled up with fire. "She's a child! A four year old girl. Not even his. I would burn King's Landing to the ground before..." It took a little while for the words to escape her trembling lips. She had none left, none that would leave the swirling fishbowl of her head, at least. _A speech like that, as drunk as she is, is a true feat._

A feat, but not necessarily surprising: Cersei loved her children, unequivocally, undeniably, irrevocably. A love like that overpowered anything, even the influence of alcohol, or so it would seem.

_She loves them the way that she once loved me, and therein lies the problem._

"Save your breath, I know you would," he breathed when was sure that she would not speak again. "Why was he going to hit her?"

"Reasons were not the first thing on my mind," she admitted shakily, sneering. Her crazed eyes beamed with hatred as she recalled the night's events.

"And your hair?"

She scoffed at that. "He grabbed me by my braid... I thought he was going to rip it out of my scalp. I was cooking, when... I still had a knife in my hand, so... I cut it off." Her eyes narrowed as she sensed the incredulous expression plastered upon his face. "I warned him, Jaime! I told him I would, he didn't believe it. He _laughed_ at me. Had to... prove the oaf wrong." Her eyes dropped to the checkerboard floor as she drained the glass. "Guess my pride rr-rather got the best of me there."

"Lion's pride has been known to be fatal," he retorted, chuckling and turning her chin back up to look at him, relieving her hands of the burden of the mug. Their eyes lingered together for a long time: He watched hers change from a false, drunken sort of peace, to relief, to pain.

She reached a hand out to rest on his bare chest, and the other arm wrapped around him, pulling him close. Their breath mingled, forming an amorous haze between them. As her face neared his, he could sense all of the singular scents of the night on her skin and lips: under the spearmint, there was the bitter breath of alcohol, biting acidity, licorice, wormwood, tobacco, _of course, if she is drinking, that is only obvious,_ vanilla, and lavender, always lavender. It was the only thing that soothed her stress headaches, he knew. That smell had been the only constant in his life for the longest time. Lavender was the silent and innocent glances they had shared as children and adults, the salve with which she anointed him when they had played at knights and queens, the only thing left of the world when they kissed with eyes closed. The familiarity served to ensnare him, and Jaime couldn't help himself for a second: his hand wandered lower, roamed about her neck, the single shoulder exposed by the too-wide neckline, the fabric of the borrowed shirt, and down even further to work her bare thighs with calloused finger pads.

Suddenly, the softest of moans resounded between them, a carnal sound of want, an echo of his name out into the air. The subtle noise dripped from her liquored lips, and when it reached Jaime's ears, he snapped out of the illusion, because _even if it is my favorite one, that is all it is. You don't betray people that you love._ They broke apart sharply, two shards of glass afraid of rubbing their edges together because the scratches never quite buffed out.

He occupied his hands pouring her another cup of coffee, sipping at his own, fiddling with the handle of the matching crimson mug. He didn't dare to chance a glance up at her.

"Oh, I... My mistake," she rasped quietly.

He kept his eyes averted downward even as she addressed him. They took in the sight of her only up to the tip of her nose or so. He watched her swill her second cup of coffee, pour another, swirling the black liquid until it rippled and waved like the sea at night. He still couldn't bring himself to make eye contact. He had no idea how many minutes passed that they stayed like that. It was so quiet that a pin could have been heard dropping on the floor. He could hardly stand the silence. He knew that he could not have borne whatever resided in her eyes, too.

It took a few moments for the tears to meander far enough down her face for them to reach his field of view.

That was when he _did_ move to look at her. He could never take it when she cried; She didn't do it often, which was all the better, but she only ever did it in front of him, which really made it even worse when she _did_. The idea that it was his fault certainly did make it a thousand times as awful. Whatever hell her eyes might resemble, he could bare the tears even less, and so their gazes met again.

"It was a mistake," she repeated once she could properly look at him, soft as silk. She spoke the apology like a secret. "I'm sorry I was ever with him, Jaime, I--"

He was honestly taken aback; he couldn't help it. He clutched his eyes tight for a moment, and forced them open again, trying to ground himself to the world around him, the piercing fluorescent light bulbs projecting their glow onto the mug in his hand, the smells of food and wet metal wafting from the sink, the refrigerator humming behind them, the mint breeze of her breath against him. He had to assure himself that this was real. They both knew that she was talking about Lancel, now, and she had never spoken about it that way.

She had rationalized taking him to bed first, of course, explaining it away as though that would actually make it _go away._

_"I couldn't stop seeing Joffrey's face when I looked at you. Especially after we... In the sept..." Joffrey was our son. Of course his face would be like mine. Yours and mine._

_"I thought it would help me feel something. I was so numb, Jaime." I was supposed to make you feel everything. We were supposed to share everything, especially those things. Love and loss._

_"I lost control of everything. I just needed that back." As though I ever had any trouble following your lead._

_"It wasn't like that. I don't love him." Maybe not, but you swore that you would always love me_.

She had pleaded with him, then, to stay with her, _after everything she did, even after she fucked our own cousin, even after she didn't say it back,_ and then she had raged at being denied his kisses, his attention in her bed, when he said he needed space. She had tried to take them from him, too, after he had said so, pressing her lips to his, stirring at his groin with lithe hands, beating on his chest angrily with hungry fists as he pulled away from her every advance, each time she reached out for him.

She had even argued, fiery and spiteful at the apparent loss, that it was her body with which to do what she liked, and perhaps that had stung most of all, because it wasn't hers, not exclusively, anyway. It was halfway his, just as his body belonged to her. They were one soul, cut in half and trapped that way by the gods until the Stranger came for them with larcenous kisses and chilling breath. They belonged to each other, _we are half of each other, did you forget that?_ And it seemed like she had forgotten it, only once, but once was one time too many.

No, she had done everything else, but she had never apologized, never admitted guilt, not until now.

"You're _sorry_?"

"Y-yes, I... It wasn't right."

"And just when did you come to this conclusion?" The question swam heartlessly out into the air. Jaime immediately regretted letting it slip, or at least the manner in which it had been asked, but _I can't just reach out into the air and pull it back._

The thought almost made him want to reach out and pull her back.

"About five seconds after it was over," she admitted, staring through him, straight ahead at the wall. Jaime had always heard people say that drunk words were sober thoughts, but she was twice as alert now as she had been when he'd gotten there.

_Well, this is an interesting development._

"After what was over?" he pressed, raising an eyebrow.

"You know," she murmured, her eyes working their way hesitantly back to him. "You already know."

"Oh, I'm not quite sure I do."

"Don't make me say it, Jaime," she snapped back with as much anger as a cautious whisper could hold. "I don't think either of us would like that."

The glance they were sharing was a game of grandstanding, just like the greater part of the past year had been, only Cersei had lost at this game long ago. They both lost just by playing, in a certain way, but her losses were so much worse than his after tonight, and she'd given up on pretending at contending at all. It was blatantly obvious, now, that she _knew_ that. There were no more biting remarks and icy stares left in her. She was doing her best to summon that back, but it was hollow at best. All she wanted to do was take a knee and let the war be over, turn over the dirt and ash and rebuild on the wreckages of the Kingdoms. Here she was, the only woman he had ever loved, sat before him, half-naked, half-drunk, and half-high, most like, bruises and blood consuming her face, _our face,_ begging his forgiveness in her way, the only way her prideful mind could muster, and that was when realized that he had lost, too.

_We both lost everything the moment that we lost each other._

"No," he responded finally, "no, don't say it." He was inching closer to her, then, closing the space between their faces, warming the shame streaming down her face with each throaty breath. "I can't stand the thought." _It's like breathing life back into the thing all over again._ Chapped lips finally met with the soft skin of her cheek, kissing the tears away unabashedly now. They were like a pair of magnets, repelling, charged to oppose each other, but somehow selfsame, too, always stuck together as soon as they faced each other the right way. Nothing could stop whatever kept pulling them back, not now, not her will, not his own, not her catching breath, not his racing heart, not any force in this world. It was much bigger than the two of them, and especially greater than any man who sought to tear them asunder. All he could taste was the salt on her skin, but the moment was ever so sweet. "But I know there's something else you want to say." His mouth reached the bruise clouding her right eye, gingerly kissing the lilac petals better, as he had done with every bruise and scrape since they were children, as she would still do for him after combat brawls, shootouts, barely-won battles that served to break the skin. "Don't cry, sister. Just tell me what you're thinking."

He could feel her eye clenching closed at his words. She tilted her head until her mouth was at his ear. He could feel her breath, hitching and then slowing, tentative at each interval as though every one might be the last. The air emanating from her lungs was so hot and close that it almost felt wet, like the hanging vapor stick of summer humidity against him, at his neck, his earlobe, and then her lips were pressing and brushing gently there much akin to his own. Her fingers coiled into his hair, holding him captive against her, amidst the kisses they had both been quietly longing to give and take for months. They peppered each other with withheld affections for a moment as he anxiously awaited whatever was to come next.

And then, like a prayer, "I love you, I love you, I love you."


	3. Redamancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Choices.  
> Confessions.  
> Congress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a WARNING before you proceed, this chapter contains explicit smut (sexual content.) The chapter contains light power play elements as well as the fact of one party being somewhat intoxicated at the time. This chapter is NOT meant to read as a dub-con in any way, but I know this sort of content may still bother some people. If you are unable (legally or otherwise) or unwilling to view such content, a cut has been provided so that you can see where the content begins while still being able to read the chapter. Just stop at the cut, and move to the next chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> "I want to be standing right in front of you. I want the air that you breathe to be coming directly out of my mouth. I want to just be passing air back and forth between each other until it's mostly carbon dioxide and we both pass out and die."  
> -Winston, New Girl.

He pulled back to search her eyes, his face the perfect picture of shock, perplexed ecstasy.

"You've never said it three times before," he breathed, almost laughing. Part of him knew that it was the wrong thing to say, that when someone said _"I love you,"_ you said it back, so long as you felt that way, and _of course I do._ Another part of him didn't quite agree, the part that thought that if she didn't say it back when he said it, maybe he didn't have to, either.

"It's... It means something this time," she managed.

"I would have hoped it meant something every time you said it to me," he said with a long exhale, indignant.

"It's once for each babe you gave me, Jaime," she came back drearily, struck at the outward mention of their firstborn son. "And... and once for every time I didn't say it back."

_Godsdammit._

He kissed her.

It was gripping and needy and over too quickly, just a clasp of her bottom lip between his. Her slackened jaw was slow to reflexively close, weighed down with the alcohol, but she _did_ kiss back, and that was everything.

"I wasn't sure if you were ever going to do that again," she admitted as she grasped at both sides of his face and forced him to look at her. The way that her eyes seemed to swirl with pleasure at simply being able to touch him at her leisure was everything that he had missed all of this time. He was sure that the green ice of his own eyes must be melting, and he caught himself wondering what she might be seeing there. All he wanted was to absorb her, to be one with her again. Jaime forgot for a moment that he was supposed to be angry, that they were supposed to be circling in the most civil of wars.

There was more than enough blood trapped beneath Cersei's steel skin from the earlier events of the evening, though; surely they had no need of any more, even in the metaphorical sense. Much akin to the membrane, she herself had refused to break and fold under jibes, humiliation, the force of pressing fingers and flaring fists, and he was so proud of her. He almost told her, but instead, when he opened his mouth to speak, the concerned brother conquered the glassy-eyed lover inside of him, and it was all he could do to place the still-full cup of water just ahead of her mouth, where his own lips had lingered just a moment ago.

"You're a good brother," she echoed into the glass after draining it partway, her breath composing a melody of hums and groans as it filled the vacuum between liquid and crystal.

"I'm not quite sure good brothers kiss their sisters like that," he tittered back in mirth, his smirk ever lingering a moment from her own. He couldn't fathom the idea of moving away.

"They do when sister wants it, brother," she seduced recklessly, her eyes brimming with want as her face closed toward his once again. "Especially as much as I want you."

"Cersei, I..." _Want you? Love you? Hate you? Something much more complicated?_ The latter was a given, perhaps. Nothing about this had ever been simple.

A twinge of melancholy tugged at the corner of her mouth. "What?"

"You have had a lot to drink," he stated flatly, as though it were not the most obvious thing in the world. "And those pills. Maybe we shouldn't."

"You knew about that?" she rasped, casting her eyes down. They sobered and grew wide as the words cascaded from lips reddened and broken from nervous biting. "I guess I thought... That you would be angry."

"I was, I _am_ angry, but worried more," he asserted, pulling her closer. He hadn't even been sure the words were true until they were already out of his mouth. "I don't know what I would do if something happened to you. How many did you take?"

Speech eluded them both for a moment.

"One, just one, but it came up whole. I didn't... I don't know why I wanted to, after everything. I am not whole without you." She turned her face down. Her breath fogged down the side of his neck as bony fingers gripped at the nape needily, her next words reverberating against the pink shell of his ear. "Don't leave me again, sweet brother."

_"Sweet brother."_

Cersei knew damn well what it did to him when she called him that. She had not done it in months. She should have known better, he should have known better than to react just the way she wanted, _but then what would I be? What am I if not hers?_

"No," he disagreed with vehemence as he claimed her hair in a stark hand, pulling her head back, demanding undivided attention. Pearls chattered together behind her parted lips as she trembled under his grip. "No, I never left you. I will never leave you. You should know that."

"Prove it," she insisted as she wrapped her fingers into the beaten gold atop his own head, jerking him toward her just to the point of pain. She seemed to savor the yip that escaped his lips. "Show me."

If his kiss had been need and ownership, hers was assault and bloodletting. Brushes became crushes, lips turned to teeth, mint and bittersweet were copper strings in his cheek. Her breath clouded in his mouth as their reddened tongues brawled like gored blades, clanging and collapsing as they claimed each other. Lashes scraped at his cheekbone as her eyes flew closed. The shards of broken skin dripped oaths into each other, merging together like the first cell of life. He wasn't sure where she ended and he began, where the pain stopped and the pleasure started. They battled and settled like the bold and silent spaces between words, the quiet little places in which they existed, permeating each other, becoming one.

"You could kiss a little lower if you wanted to," she purred, licking subtle wine stains from the biting surfaces of her front teeth.

"Cersei, what if... What if he comes back?"

"Then I'll let you kill him, brother," she intoned, her eyes growing dark and serious, "just like you've always wanted."

Whether she meant it or not, Jaime did not need to hear _that_ twice.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

His lips met with hers again, in satisfaction rather than crushing need this time. He placed little kisses at the corner of her mouth, continuing further down her jaw and neck until he met the sensitive skin of the hollow at the base of her throat. His thumb trailed back and forth across the expanse of the middle of her neck, feeling her the force of her life beating beneath his fingers. His teeth traced her collarbone, scraping a bit harder each time, gauging her reactions. A contented moan met his ears.

"I know you can do better than that," she taunted.

His teeth clamped together as he moved along the bone toward the edge of her shoulder, worrying the flesh between them. He savored her smells and tastes as he gnashed and clasped at her in hunger. His tongue balmed over buds of redness as he painted them onto her skin. He whimpered a little at the loss of touch when she pushed his face away.

"This shirt needs to go," she smirked as their eyes met once again.

"You want I should take us to bed, then?" he hummed just ahead of her.

"No," she grinned, guiding his hands to the seam of the cotton shirt slithering in folds over the tops of her thighs. "I'll have you right here, I think."

_Oh, sweet sister._

"I'm going to be the one to have _you_ ," he growled back as their fingers fisted in the clothing. The clutches bumped together in their fury, eventually coalescing in a needy handhold around the fabric. They pulled the shirt over her head in haste, not wasting any more time. He winced as he saw her reflexively go to shake her hair out of the collar, hair that she quickly realized was no longer there. She stilled discernibly, wounded and incomplete.

He discarded the shirt on the cold surface of the glass top stove next to them, worming the fingers of one hand back into her hair. _It is quite a bit shorter at the back..._ There could be no doubt, it would have to be cut much shorter still to be even. He pushed the thought from his mind. "Don't," he tried. _You're beautiful._

Oh, but was she ever. His pupils dilated as he pulled back to take her in fully. His free hand idly wandered up and down the curves of her body, ribs, waist, hips, and then the reverse. He could feel himself stirring down below at the sight of her topless, and all but bottomless, too, in front of him. The idea of naught but a scrap of lace between his hands and her only served to worsen the sensation, and soon enough he was pressed up against the zipper of his pants. " _Beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful."_ He didn't even realize that the musings were leaving his mouth until he noticed the way that she was looking up at him.

"Show me," she said again, inhaling sharply and closing her eyes.

What more could he possibly have needed to hear? Cersei was the only woman he had ever wanted, the only one that he _would_ ever want. He could see that now. It didn't matter how long they were separated, and it didn't matter why. His jealousy, rage, grief; Awful as they were, these only served to enkindle the fire, even if it choked the atmosphere with impossible smoke.

_I'd rather suffocate with her than breathe with anyone else._

"Don't open your eyes yet," he said. "I want to try something."

Jaime crossed the room to the refrigerator, opening it as soundlessly as he could. Just as he'd hoped, he found a spray can of whipped cream in the door. Retrieving it, he shut the door and returned to her. Part of him wanted to rush through this. He wanted to make her his once again before either of them could change their minds, and he certainly wanted to relieve the aching he had for her. A bigger part knew that he should take his time. This part knew that they were very vulnerable, angry, altered, and that tonight was delicate. He felt like at any moment, what was just coming together again could fall apart.

Besides, the longer they took, the better the chances that Robert _would_ come back, and then this chapter of their lives could be ended once and for all.

He removed the cap of the can and placed his index finger on the nozzle. His mouth returned to her throat and feasted there for a moment, moving down, down, down, savoring all of her breaths and little sounds. He met with the valley between her breasts and palmed the left one carefully, almost with hesitation. He flicked at her nipple with his fingers, and he pressed the nozzle up against the skin of her chest. The four sharp plastic tips bit into her flesh, and she cried out a little. He grinned against her, grazing harder, pushing deeper, as he approached his destination. He sprayed a morsel of cream onto the nipple, sweeping over it with his tongue and then sucking and nipping in earnest. His eyes never left her face. The show was too thrilling to miss. Her head was crooked back, mouth open, her breath quickening. Cersei's heart raced under his hands. "Harder," she was saying. "Harder, Jaime, I want you to leave marks." She looked down at him, taking him into her hands again. "I want to trace my fingers over where your mouth was in the mirror tomorrow morning."

That was when he knew that she'd meant what she said. Jaime had never been able to leave marks on her for fear of someone seeing, of her husband finding out. If she was going to let him, then she was going to let him kill Robert, she was going to leave this place. She was going to be his again.

He gladly obeyed her, trailing his mouth down from her nipple over the under curve of the heavy breast, over her jutting ribs, leaving harsh bites all the way. Suddenly, he _wanted_ , wanted to leave lip prints and bite marks, even if they were only his to see. He wanted to show her that there were beautiful ways to wear bruises, too. Some of them would be a light purple just moments from now, but the others might sit and simmer undetected and invisible under her skin, ultraviolet ultraviolence, unseen until they were far, far away from this place, treats to be savored now and then later.

With treats on the brain, Jaime picked up the can of cream again once he met with the textured skin of her belly. _"Show me,"_ she'd said. He knew that this had always been one of greatest insecurities, especially in the beginning. "I always loved them, you know," he sighed against her, tracing the red and white marks imprinted on the surface. Silvered valleys stretched and rose from her middle to her waist. "Even before you did." He kissed along the declinate lines, much more gently this time, quietly loving them. His left hand fingered the impression just above her navel, caressing it as he looked up at her. His right hand drifted to a set of marks just above her hip, peppered with freckles from too much time in the sun. "I always thought that these right here," he said as he outlined them in sweet cream, eliciting a gasp as he chilled her skin, "looked like the King's Crown." The milky constellation melted and dissolved just as soon as it was there, but the evidence still lived on his tongue. He discarded the can on the counter again, leaving both of his hands free.

His lips moved down still further to her right side. He kissed and bit at her inner thigh, and she fisted her hands into his hair, pulling him closer between her legs. "No, no, not yet," he murmured with a little snicker. He dropped fully to his knees as she let him go, continuing further down her leg, paying special attention to the back of her knee, that special sensitive place. She gasped when she realized what he was doing. His hands finally met her ankle, wrapping around it just like they had when he had been born. "Womb to tomb, sweetheart," he murmured for the thousandth time, mostly to himself, kissing at the house sigil tattooed on her foot. The lion inscribed on his left hand, just the same, was overlapping with her own. His thumbs worked at the sole of her foot as he lavished kisses along the top of it, ending with one little peck for each toe.

He had always loved to worship at her feet.

He made his way back up her leg, hastily this time. She was squirming against him, clearly growing quite impatient, almost as much as he, truly. "I want to taste you, sister," he moaned against her skin. He was so close that he could smell her sex. Heady musk spiced the air, and he could feel those very first drops of his seed clinging at the head of his cock. "Would you like that?"

She answered through clenched teeth. "Mm, yes, oh, yes, Jaime, Jaime, please."

That struck him. She hardly ever spoke this way. Cersei  _never_ begged, not ever. This was a rare opportunity indeed.

"Say it again," he commanded with a flash of lust, grinning almost evilly. His tongue dashed out of his mouth to lick at her, teasing just a bit. She had soaked through the panties already, and he could feel his tongue growing even more wet than was normal at the contact.

"Please, Jaime, I need you to..."

Her knew that speech was all but lost to her. He didn't need to hear any more. She pushed against the countertop beneath her, lifting herself off of it, and he worked at the lace between them with his teeth, pulling at one side of the waistband, helping her leg out of it. She scooted to the very front, allowing him an easier reach, and he pulled the step stool sitting in front of the sink over to them, allowing himself some comfort as he knelt in front of her. He wrapped a hand around each thigh, squeezing and scratching in little strokes.

Her cunt glinted with wetness just ahead of his face. His eyes met hers as he took an exploratory taste, licking up and down the length of her slit. She reached down and parted her lips for him with two fingers. He couldn't help but moan against her. "I missed this," he admitted shyly, looking up at her as innocently as he could. He knew how much she loved that feeling of power, of taking that sense of innocence away from him, turning them both into a mess of need.

"You missed me," she admonished.

No one said anything else. Jaime only had breath for her scents, and he intended to steal away every breath that she might have used to talk. There was the perfect perfume of sweetness, and just below it, salty tang. His tongue met with the button above her opening, and he suckled there, nibbling softly just as she liked. A finger ghosted over her entrance, then another, asking permission. Her hand closed over his, pushing it forward until the tip of his index finger was inside her. Her fingers wrapped back into his hair, pulling his face closer, right where she wanted. Jaime found himself drunk on her. The world was disappearing around them, and he wanted to make her lose herself, every stress, every thought, every word but his name. He pushed his finger further in, up to the last knuckle, turning it upward and curling it, searching for that one spot that drove her mad. He knew when he found it. Her mouth told him so, if not in words.

Jaime was furious, wanton, hellbent, and he could see how well she loved it. She was a hurricane above him, her chopped hair whirling in the haze of her breath, her upper half rolling and writhing with her efforts to keep quiet, her tits bouncing with the movements, her stomach muscles rippling just beneath her skin. He added a second finger and picked up his pace, his tongue flicking with viciousness against her. He wanted her to lose control of her body around his hand, and he wanted it to be on _his_ terms. So when she bucked her hips up against his face, he was having none of that. His free hand moved from her thigh to still her own set of ministrations, holding her hip down.

Her eyes narrowed, defiant. Cersei pushed harder against him, determined to have control, but he refused to give it up. He removed his fingers from the warmth, wrapping them about her other hip, pushing harder as she moaned at the loss.

She slapped him. An icy sting crawled about the skin of his cheek.

Just as soon, he could feel his face growing warm against her hand. "You are forgetting who is in charge here," she asserted with a smirk, jerking his hair back with a little shake of her head. "It's not you." She leaned to grab the red tea towel hanging from the handle of the oven door next to them. "I think you need to be reminded of that." Her voice was coming from low in her throat. She grasped at his hands gripping her hips, facing them to each other and tying them together in a perfect bow. Of course he let her. He certainly didn't mind: It had been quite a long time since he had seen her so passionate. Even if he had wanted to stop her, she wasn't one to be denied what she wanted. He watched and waited as she admired her handiwork and then moved her eyes back to glance at him.

Her eyes enchanted him.

"More," he breathed, embarrassed of the word as soon as it left his mouth.

"More?" she asked, tilting her head to the side and biting her lip, perhaps a bit too hard. It tremulously threatened to break and bleed like before. Her thumb stroked his cheek, the skin no doubt pinking underneath. "You want me to do that again?"

"Oh, fuck, yes, hit me again." His words came through with enthusiasm, without regard to how hard he had tried to hold them back.

Still stroking and cradling his face, her other hand came up for a smack at the other side. He gasped, recoiling against her. He hated how much he liked this, how the humiliation brought him into such a submissive space. The sting rippled through his skin, sending jolts of electricity to his center, which pulsed with an ache for attention.

"Touch yourself for me, little brother," she breathed, echoing his thought. Just as she spoke, her hand landed again, and then on the other cheek. _"Little brother."_ He sucked in air briskly. _Gods be good, Cersei, you are going to make me spill._ It had been a pillow name of theirs in times like this what seemed like a lifetime ago. She pulled at the sides of his face, and he rose to meet her, eager. "Ooh. Such a pretty blush." He worked at undoing the khakis just as she had asked. It was more difficult to manage than it seemed, even with his hands tied in front of him rather than in the back. She seemed to savor his struggles. "Mine, my Jaime, mine, mine, mine." Fingers were grazing at his member with his every effort, only making it even harder to maneuver, to think. Just when he had snaked himself out of his boxers, her hand met his skin once more on each side. It felt like a kiss. Her fingers raked over his skin. The beautiful violence made gleeful jewels of her green eyes.

With his cock between his tied fists and his face between her nimble fingers, Jaime was overcome. Perhaps this was the wrong time. She was half sober, half drunk, beaten, broken up, and he was exhausted, raging like a beast, jealous, mad with lust, but was there ever the right time for a thing like this? He couldn't keep everything inside of himself anymore. "I love you, Cersei," he said faintly, finally. Her lungs emptied abruptly onto his face as the words reached her ears. The harsh scrapes turned to strokes, and her eyes softened as she soothed burning skin over with her cool breath. "I love you, I love you, fuck, do I ever love you." She pulled him down to her, and they laughed into each other's mouths at the absurdity of the thing, and that was when she said it back at last. The same air circulated back and forth between the two of them, he said it, and then she did, and together and again until neither was sure who had said it first or last anymore, until it didn't matter.

"I'm ready, Jaime," Cersei susurrated against his throat. "I need you inside of me."

That was all Jaime had to hear.

He reached clumsily back toward the pocket of his unzipped khakis for his wallet, the condom he kept inside. His bound hands were struggling to grip it in their current state of affairs. An awkward little predicament, but it made sense. _Tonight has hardly been perfect._ Sensing what he was doing, she batted them away, shaking her head. He let them encircle the back of her neck in comfort instead. "I don't want you to use that," she cooed. "I want to feel it." He gasped a little at the words. "You. Your skin." Her voice was barely a whisper by now. "Everything." Jaime let his lids fall absently, turning the thought over in his mind, savoring the peace of her musical voice in his own vacuum of darkness.

"Are you sure?" Heavy as they felt on his tongue, his own words scarcely existed in the air before they were gone again. Even with eyes closed, Jaime hardly heard them leave his mouth. The world was halfway lost to him.

_Is it madness?_

" _So_ sure." She laughed, and the sound seemed to fill him up. "I promise I wanted this long before I started drinking." Her thought swung with dark humor between them. "I was hoping I'd get to see you tonight... Before everything."

He almost felt guilty at that idea. He had purposely sat out the family reunion they'd both missed tonight just so that he wouldn't have to bicker with her across the table, wouldn't have to watch _him_ groping at her, too deep in his cups to care if the children saw, wouldn't have to wait in hopes of having a chance, a turn that probably wouldn't come.

"You wanted to see me," he exhaled back, opening his eyes to look at her again. It was almost a question.

"I was going to make cream of crab soup for the party. For you." The fingers of one hand crept around his hip. _My favorite._ "I waxed for you." Her other hand was lurking furtively further south, settling just above the hardness there. "I rubbed myself raw thinking of you." Her nimble fingers wrapped around the base of his cock as she spread her thighs wider for him. "Three times this week." She pulled him in closer, guiding him gently against her core with clever hands.

_Is it?_

As he pulsed against her, he realized that he didn't care.

"Did you now?" he teased into her neck. "Do you know why?" He moved his hips forward, aligning himself perfectly up against the slickness of her entrance. "Why you can't stop thinking about me even when it's been months?"

"Tell me," she breathed, almost begging.

_Who is in control here, again?_

That didn't quite matter either.

"Because you're _mine_ ," he militated, punctuating the word with the first push of their coupling. "My queen, my sweet sister, my baby girl. You're mine, Cersei." His breaths had grown a bit ragged already: She had enveloped him with her tight warmth, and the ache between his legs was both worse and better all at once. "You always will be, until the day you're gone forever." He thrust twice more, finally sheathing himself fully inside of her. "And even then, I'll still come after you."

"Yours," she echoed at his ear. "Yours, Jaime, yours, I'm yours."

He began to move in and out of her with reckless abandon, taking her, mating with her, picking up speed. This time, when she rolled her hips against him, he didn't stop it. He welcomed it, savored it. She reached back to untie his hands, pulling them loose in one fluid motion. "Touch me." One of his hands grasped at her face, and the other moved down to play with her swollen clit. Claws bit into the skin of his back like catching prey. He could feel her beginning to tighten around him rather quickly, and he razed at her pink pearl harder with his thumb until she cried out, with pleasure or pain he couldn't quite say. He couldn't blame her for her own eagerness: He wasn't far off from it himself. She was so impossibly tight around him, it had been so long, and they were pressed so incredibly close. It took everything he had to hold on.

Cersei had other ideas. Jaime's ministrations, in their roughness, didn't take long to carry her to the edge. She bit down on his neck and cried her pleasure into his skin as she rutted against him. Even as she squealed and tried to move his hand away, he never stopped rubbing, never slowed down, never gave her a moment to breathe. "Again." This time, he wasn't asking, he was telling, demanding. "You're going to do it again."

He was right, too. It took all of a minute and a half for her to clamp down around him again, flooding him with wetness, nearly sobbing at the intensity of everything. This time, she was adamant. She ripped his hand away once it was over, twining their fingers together, turning her face away from his neck. Her free hand turned his face toward hers. "Look at me," she directed as he thrust inside of her, gritting her teeth and gazing into his eyes earnestly. "Don't look away." Jaime cherished what he saw there. The better part of this night had been a game of power, angry sex, makeup sex, tired sex, slow sex, drunk sex, a thousand things. Somewhere along the way, though, somehow, it had become a beautiful joining, something pure, something both needed not just in their bodies, but in their souls.

Of course, the bodily needs were still there. Jaime could feel his peak fast approaching. "Should I... Where do you..."

She already knew. "Inside me," she moaned, "oh, fuck, cum inside me, I need to feel it."

The curse at her lips, the demands from her throat, the desperation in her voice served to be his undoing. Three hard strokes, and he obeyed her. Though the build up had been so great, there was a release but not an explosion. It was a sigh rather than a scream: In fact, sighs of his name rolled from her lips as she followed him to bliss for the third time. Warmth rushed through his body as they held onto each other, riding out the waves. It felt much longer than whatever sum of seconds must have passed. He held her face at his flushed chest as they got their breath back. When he finally pulled out of her, their fluids pooled onto her thighs.

"Look at you sitting there all used, covered in that mess you made me make, my sticky girl," he murmured into her hair, still holding her, protecting her. He couldn't even think about letting go.

It was peace. Sarcastic, awful, possessive peace. The only sort the two had ever known.

"You might want to get me off your face before you say things like that," she smirked back, tilting her head up and kissing him gently. It was a sated kiss, much more than a brush of her lips, but no longer seeking, only appreciating. Loving. There was nothing left to take, only to keep, to have, to hold.

_No need to rush. We have forever._

He grabbed a napkin from the counter and helped her clean up and calm down.

"Take me home," she blurted suddenly.


	4. Exodus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old wounds opened by older lovers.  
> Worship at the altar of another.  
> Epics told true.  
> Egress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “when he died  
> the gods should have placed him  
> among the stars  
> not forgotten  
> in the ground.”  
> -the gods were unkind to you / j.m

_"Take me home," she blurted suddenly._

Her inelegance dazed him. "Home?"

"Home," she implored. " _Our_ home."

It had been _his_ these past few months. Cersei referred to the house that they'd shared during their four years at university. Father had been renting it out for the last few years until Jaime had bought it when he'd said he _needed space._

_Nearly half an hour from here in city traffic is more space than I expected._

He was the apotheosis of silence ahead of her, still as a statue. Whether thinking or waiting to explode, she wasn't sure. Her head spun with tension from the light, the lashing of tongue and fist, the liquor, the little energy left in her body, spent just moments ago. A smile threatened to tug at her aching face at that thought.

It was a hollow threat. Things were much too serious just now.

"I cannot," she continued tentatively, "will not, let my children--"

"They are my children, too," he interrupted, his eyes growing dark. The midnight air chilled despite them being reclothed.

"I know that," she answered, looking down for a split second. The fingers of her right hand moved to play with the band that usually abided on her left ring finger, but no more. That was all the bauble meant to her. It was a nervous habit, a toy.

_I have been as much to him, no more._

"Are you angry with me, Jaime?" she asked, her face hardening.

"No," he dismissed, shaking his head. Beaten gold whipped in the wind he left behind. Cersei tried to ignore how beautiful he looked, glowing like a god beneath manufactured moonbeams. "No, it's... It's just very hard for me to trust you right now, do you understand that?"

"What?" The words were a slap. "Why?"

" _Why_? Cersei... You slept with another man. You went to great lengths to hide things from me. Things have been so tense between us. You didn't say it back. Three times, you admitted that. Now you go and get piss drunk, which you are _not_ supposed to do, and you want to change your whole attitude. How am I supposed to know you'll mean all of this in the morning?"

Cersei wasn't sure how to address the predicament her twin presented. He couldn't possibly see it her way. He wouldn't understand that this wasn't a relapse, that this was supposed to be _it_. How could he? She couldn't explain that the bottle of absinthe was skull-shaped because it was meant to be the manner of her death, that she hadn't even been sure if he was real or not when he had first appeared, that she had taken the one pill to see if she could stomach it, that she would have done her damnedest to choke down the whole bottle if he hadn't arrived. He would never understand the way that her nightmares about their son had begun to follow her into her days, that she was close to being put back into that vile place, _no, a worse one,_  declared ill, unfit. She especially couldn't divulge that she had left a last will and testament admitting that Robert had not fathered any of her children, committing Tommen and Myrcella into Jaime's hands, Mother's in the event that he became... _incapacitated_.

 _"We will leave this world as we once came into it."_ What was once perhaps the most romantic notion the two had shared now served only to daunt the lioness.

Tonight had been her last chance to be with her family, to bring it back together, to find some semblance of function before the worst might happen. All had been lost, until her shining knight had rode in on his horse to save her, or so it had seemed at first.

He had to understand. There was no other way.

"Jaime, have you considered the idea that sex does not mean the same thing to you and me?"

His mouth hung open, eyes bulging, in rage or something else, she wasn't sure. His voice came soft but angry through the air. "You let me hold you, kiss you everywhere. You said that I was yours, that you were mine. You held my face between your hands and told me that you loved me. That meant nothing to you?"

"What we just did, Jaime, it meant everything to me," she corrected, wrapping her fingers around the nape of his neck. "Because it was _with someone_ who means everything to me. You don't know the difference. You've never been forced to have someone in your bed. It doesn't always mean something. It can be about love, yes, but it can be about desire, too, it can be about control. I lost that." _I lost my son. My first boy. I couldn't save him, only watch him leave._ "Lost my power. I... didn't set out to hurt you." _I didn't even set out to do it._

"You think you're the only one hurt?" Jaime's features were flame as he pulled back from her. Paces fell between them like thunder. "He parades you in front of me, in front of the family like some fuck trophy." She bristled when he said that. _"Fuck trophy?"_ Whether he was wrong in this or she, whether the words might be true or not, Jaime should have known better than to _ever_ speak to her that way. "He has since the beginning. I've watched it all happen. I stood up there next to him when you said your vows."

"I am no one's _fuck trophy_. You had best learn that right now, _brother_ ," she warned. "And I scarcely even looked at him when I said them, if you remember." _I was too busy looking at you._ She pulled in a breath, willing it to wash the heat from her boiling body. The world might spin at a normal speed if she breathed slowly enough. Jaime could snap at her if he liked, but it did no good to shout back. The last thing they needed was for Tommen or Myrcella to wake up and hear more arguing, especially about this. "I didn't want any of this. Father did."

"But your choice to listen to Father has affected more people than just you!"

"I see," she spat back, quiet and vile as a sin, "and does he call _you_ by another woman's name? Does he dishonor you in front of the world with his whores, stopping for questions with the little birds and their cameras on the streets while he's with them? Does he hit you twice as hard every time you hit him back?" Bare feet crossed against the cold cabinet doors as her eyes grew great with contempt. "Does he laugh and keep going when you don't get wet for him? Does he hit you and choke you and fuck you bloody when you dare to tell him no? Does he do that to you? Or me?"

Something seemed to click in Jaime's mind at that. He tried to stay stoic, but she could see tears glittering like diamonds against the emeralds of his eyes. Fingers joined tersely at the back of his head. Knuckles greyed with the grip. It was like he himself was the only thing that he could hold onto in the world. _He should be holding onto me._ Green eyes graced the checkerboard floor, sweeping, searching for an answer that certainly resided elsewhere. "Of course we'll go home," he said after a long silence. Syllables crawled from the space between his trembling lips. "Of course, you can't stay here. Tommen and Myrcella, they can't stay here."

_Especially not them._

She nodded a few times as she still wrung her hands. The argument apparently over, his eyes had softened, the loury sprinkles of sadness cleansed by the back of his hand. Their postures aligned naturally toward each other. Hearts and breathing fell in sync once again.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. No matter how much necessity lied behind it, Cersei was giving brother everything he had ever wanted. He should have been beaming, ready and rearing to go, kissing at her feet. _Again_. Questioning her, and especially a refusal to trust, was the last thing that she had expected of him. Was this their destiny, to knit back together only to leave the ends so ungraciously unraveled? Would things ever be the same?

Could seven minutes really ruin thirty-four years?

"Come on," he conferred, stepping into her space. "We need to go now. You don't want..."

He didn't need to finish. The longer they stayed like this, the greater the risk of them being found grew. Cersei shuddered. Robert would die for what he had done, what he had almost done to her daughter, but not tonight. She had only given Jaime permission to kill him if he returned based on the notion that he wouldn't. The last time this had happened, he hadn't been home for three days, and she hadn't even retaliated that time. That had been hard enough to explain to the children. She and Jaime half clothed, she with her bloodshot eye and bluing cheek, he with his battered back and flushed face, the mess of the world around them, her spinning head and bitter breath... That would be particularly problematic.

Traumatic, even.

She took the hand that he offered, letting his grip anchor her to reality. "Can you walk?" he asked, concerned.

She waved him off, descending from her perch on the counter. "Your cock is not quite _that_ powerful, I'm afraid."

His eyebrow crooked. "That wasn't what I meant," he defended. Her favorite shit-eating grin filled his face, and then, "and you shouldn't tell lies, sweet sister."

She rolled her eyes, refusing to succumb to his wicked ways. One of them needed to be serious. Still, the denial did take effort. The jape earned him half a smile, even if she didn't let him see.

They crept upstairs, quiet and furtive as stalking shadowcats. Cersei was pleased to find her bedroom still in array, even if she was leaving it behind. Since she and Robert had stopped sharing a bed some months ago, save for when wine infested him and he _insisted_ , the room was much neater, felt more like home. Only like, though; Home was Casterly Rock. Home was cliffs, swords, horses. Home was six-pointed shells and shared beds, or it had been, until it had become something more.

Home was a six-bedroom house, _one for each point of that same shell,_ with the two largest conveniently conjoined, though only one saw use. Home was their first real opportunity to explore each other unabated, to laze together afterward, to make beautiful love, beautiful noise. Home was where they had fallen further in love, the kind where you woke up and ate and read and laughed and wept and went to sleep together under no one's watch but the other's and your own. Home was where Jaime had been her husband for four years before she had ever worn a ring meant to signify the same. Home was wherever the world had fallen together and apart a thousand times, but the two had stayed whole.

Home was the place where they were headed now.

This time, the other side of her mouth tilted up at her thoughts. Cersei had not truly smiled, not the way Jaime had always loved, all full lips and dancing eyes, in quite awhile. Perhaps now, that might change.

Her head swirled as the raising volume of brother's voice skipped like stones atop the sea of her thoughts. Remembering was a thousand times as easy as comprehending with her eyes so weighed down. "We both need to get dressed," he was saying above her. She didn't even remember sitting down on the bed, yet there she was, taking shelter against the beating of fluorescence on her face under her pillow. "Actually dressed. You'll need to cover up that eye." He was bending closer to meet her, peering at it. She was grateful for his face blocking the light. The glow glorified him with a radiant halo, and suddenly she cared much more for the velvet of his voice than the words it formed. "We wouldn't want Tommen to get a look at it."

She knew that what Jaime was saying must be quite important, but she couldn't stop staring at his lips. "Mhm."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Of course," she whispered back, leaning her face up toward his.

Her intentions registered more clearly on his face the closer they got. His hand slid between her thighs. "Oh, I know what you want." One finger inched between lace and skin, then another. "We could," he said with a little laugh, parting blushing petals and drawing little circles along the flower bud beneath the floral lace, "but I don't know if we should." Her fingers hooked into his belt loops, pulling him closer until their hips aligned perfectly. His finger traced her slit, taking wetness still left there from his climax and putting it to use up above.

_Of course we should._

"The children are only down the hall," he was murmuring as he picked up his pace, "and you weren't so good at staying quiet just now." She wanted to giggle, but held it back so as not to prove his point. His fingers circled quickly, but the touch was featherlight. The brushes against her bundle of nerves almost tickled. "Your husband could come home any minute and find us." She couldn't help the snicker that erupted now as he allowed himself a small moan at the thought. Jaime always had been a raging exhibitionist, if only in fantasies, if only because he couldn't be. Her fingers worked at the button and zipper of his trousers, brushing against the bulge beneath the fabric, freeing it. "What would he say, to see you cuckolding him in his own bed, hmmm?" His hand found purchase around her jaw, pulling her closer, eliminating the last distance between them. Lustful green orbs commanded her attention.

"I bet he'd call me a monster and you a whore," he surmised, rubbing harder, emphasizing the words. She stopped stroking only to wet her own hand to make it better for him, mimicking his pressure, speed, determined to make him lose his breath. "But he doesn't get to say things like that about my Cersei. You're _my_ whore." He flashed his teeth as he said that, daring her to say otherwise. Any other time, she might have corrected him with a pinch, a bite, a scratch, if only to watch his face, to hear the pretty little sounds he'd make, to see if he'd dare to repeat himself. This was different, though. Her free hand pulled up at the fabric of the shirt between them. She desperately needed all of their skin to touch. "I bet he'd tell us that we were sinning, that we're damned to the seven hells, but we already know that, don't we?"

"They're ours," she agreed breathily. They were both grinning madly now, rutting into each other's fingers. He loved to think about the two of them sinning at times like this. "We'll rule them. We'll decorate the walls with house sigils if we have to."

_Is it madness?_

Jaime liked that. "Everything is ours," he clarified through bared teeth. "I wouldn't stop, you know." He nipped her bottom lip, gentle but unrelenting. "Nothing in this world could make me stop. I'd make him watch a real man please you. You'd come undone in my hands, again and again. I'd kill him if he tried to stop me. We'd fuck in his blood if we had to." He seemed to luxuriate in her gasps, moving his mouth to her ear, catching the lobe in his teeth, bearing down, breathing his next words quiet as an arcane seclusion. "We'll need to sin quite a bit if you want those hells, and I know blood is your favorite thing."

_Is it?_

Cersei could feel her eyes growing wider with every word. She wanted to tell him how horrible that was, call him wicked to think such a thing, but the slickness coating his fingers only betrayed what a lie that would have been. Her head spun, and not from the alcohol she had imbibed some hours ago; this euphoria was brand new. Inhibition abandoned her.

"Fuck me."

The hand she had wrapped around him guided him inside as his own ripped the lace out of the way. They didn't take things nearly so slowly the second time. It was urgent and fast and hard and _hot_ and lasted just long enough, the roughest sort of gentle sin, the kind you couldn't wait to commit. They merged into a mess of hip grips and lip nips, moans and murmurs, pulsing muscles and racing hearts. Her voice came in wisps as she immured him in myths. _"Yes, gods, yes, sweet brother, fuck me faster, harder, as hard as you can, deeper, deeper, ooh, don't stop, fuck, yes, like that, just like that, right there, give me more, this is mine, mine, you're mine, my lion, my Ser, my brother, my Jaime, Jaime, Jaime, Jaime."_ His hips blended with hers in their fury. Their centers rocked into each other, _more, more, more,_ until there was no more to be had at all, and they kissed each other quiet as they dissolved together.

Part of Cersei knew that tonight was not the end of everything, that they were trying to fuck away what they were feeling, like when it had happened, like in the sept. _It won't work._ She pushed the thought aside, willed herself to simply breathe. _It has been so long. I deserve this. Just for a moment._

_Perfect._

"No more of that," he insisted gently once they had their breath back, flicking her on the nose, earning himself a furrow of her brow. "There's a perfectly good bed at home. It's bigger, nicer than this one, too." His fingers moved to cup her smarting cheek, stroking it gently when she shrank away. _I shouldn't do that. I will not cringe. Least of all with Jaime._ "A king bed, a royal bed, fit for a queen. A silk and velvet veldt, our own little kingdom where we can rule each other, with curtains and bedclothes and all sorts of toys for adventurous little sister cubs like yourself to play with." Cersei closed her eyes, letting the image take her. "Four posts, too. You could tie my hands and feet to them, if you wanted." He chuckled. " _If_. Look who I'm talking to."

"You are making this very hard," she grumbled.

"The sooner we leave, the sooner we'll be home, hmmm?" he justified. Amusement tinted the words. Their half-smiles touched, making a whole, and they indulged quietly, kissing just for a moment, satisfied, safe. "But we have things to do first."

Clothes and coats went into trash bags and suitcases still on the hangers. They packed her, their, most prized possessions into whatever boxes they could find, to be safeguarded from Robert's wrath if and when he made it home in the morning. _Perhaps the drunken fool might crash into a tree._ Cersei rummaged through a drawer as of yet untouched, settling on a set of pajamas, a crushed velvet camisole of emerald green, matching plush pants embroidered with golden lions, and a light jade jacket.

She drifted to the bathroom, dressing hastily. Green color-correcting concealer dusted over bruised skin. One of her skintone rested atop it. Powder sealed the illusion. She tucked short hairs, _they all are now,_ out of her face with pins and topped her head with a loose knit slouch beanie spun of golden thread, the type she would tuck her long mane into on lazy days. Jaime was right. It was best that Tommen did not know about this. She had managed to shield him from the vagaries of the man he called father thus far, and she intended to keep it that way.

Neither he nor his sister would call the man "father" ever again if she had anything to say about it.

She stepped back to survey her handiwork. With the bruise covered, the dark puff of fatigue encircling her other eye stood stark against her white skin. Without curling rays to envelop her face in heat, she was gaunt, almost grey, like half of her had withered with the other just behind. Her nose and cheeks had reddened with drink and sickness, the color the only life given there. High cheekbones jutted forward. The fifteen pounds she'd lost were blatantly evident if one truly cared to look.

No one did. She hadn't been eating well, and she'd slept six good hours in half as many days. Enervation hit her. The world whirled in the harsh light behind the glass. The elation of drinking was long gone, and the exhaustion that came after built behind her eyes, turning the world white with stars set against a black sky of sleep. She blinked it away, and for some time it was all she could do to stare straight ahead at herself.

Hatred boiled beneath Cersei's skin. She hated the man that had done this to her. She hated Varys and every little bird that dared besmirch her name in a headline. She hated Jaime for not being there, and for being there, too, but most of all, herself for allowing all of this. Eyes flew closed. The reflection changed. Blood trickled from her nose, over her bare belly, down her thigh. Cruor stained waist-length curls stinking and greened from pool water. The burden of murder hung around her head like a halo.

The picture when she opened them again was somehow worse.

"You look like shit," she muttered to the ethereal echo in the glass.

"Don't do that," her reflection adjured. She turned at the sound to see him standing behind her, just out of the mirror's light. Queenie squirmed in his wiry arms, big ears perked even further up than normal with her head cocked to the side. "I was trying to round up Ser Pounce and Lady Whiskers, but I seem to have made a friend along the way," he smirked. "I'm assuming you know him?"

"She," Cersei asserted, slipping a finger into the Corgi-golden retriever mix's pink collar and pulling lightly, "is the puppy you advised me to get some months ago." She smirked a little at the crook of his brow. _"Tommen and Myrcella have adopted new friends, maybe you should do the same."_ She had laughed at Jaime when he'd made the suggestion, back when they had been on better terms what seemed a lifetime ago, before all of their mistakes, before she had ever been forced to enter the facility, a facility he had never visited.

_This is not the time to think about that._

"I can't imagine she gets along with the kittens so well," he murmured, sitting the pup down on the carpet. "They're so lively, and she seems, well..."

Queenie was quiet if spirited, decorous, demure, until playtime. Like her mother. "Queenie and Ser Pounce are best friends," Cersei disagreed. Her lips pursed a little as the pup's tongue tickled her bare toes.

"Queenie?" He laughed. "You named your dog Queenie."

Chips of emerald ice dared him to protest. "Yes."

Jaime shrugged. "Well, the car is as packed as it will get, I think. You have been in here for quite a while." He waved a hand dismissively when her face soured. "Oh, it's alright. I didn't expect you to be of much help anyway. We just need to get Tommen and Myrcella in the car."

"And all of their things," she corrected, annoyed. Biological father or not, Jaime had no idea what it took to get their children ready for a car trip. She usually did it for him.

"Done."

"Their car seats."

"Ready," he reiterated.

"Myrcella has a new one, did you--"

"I know how to work my own daughter's car seat, Cersei," he whispered, clearly agitated. He was wrong, he couldn't have known, not about this one. He had hardly seen the children in months. _I'll have to check when we get outside._ "Myrcella is awake already," he continued. "She's worried about you."

"She wasn't upset, confused to see you here?"

"She seemed quite happy to see her boring old Uncle Jaime, actually," he shot back, grimacing at the name. "Are you ready or not?"

She nodded, tucking the makeup bag into her pocket and following him down the hallway. Queenie followed on their heels. Cersei's feet planted in the carpet when she noticed the third door down the hall ajar. She and Jaime locked eyes. Hers felt heavy with pain, yet it would have been even harder to leave his face. "Why don't you go and get Cella in the car? Just... Give me a moment."

"I... I packed a few things, from in there." He gestured with a nod. "The movers will bring everything else in the morning... We can keep it just how he left it, if that helps you." He reached out for her. They gravitated together, but both flinched back from the other just before fingers laced. Their son might as well have been standing between them for how the thought of him kept them separated. "I'll just..." They shrugged apart, awkward and embittered as he cantered off.

 _"Just go in there and talk to him,"_ Mother had said. _"He will hear you, and more importantly, you will."_

As the door swung fully open, she kept her feet, if nothing else.

She had only braved this room once since he had died.

The smells had grown stale, but they were the same. Mud and grass clotted in cleats discarded next to the bed clad in sheets printed with hexagons. Pictures of him with his sister, his brother, his teammates, and so many with Sansa clung to every wall, dotting the space with memories of every shape and size. She liked to think that Sansa would have been infinitely happier than she if they'd grown up, married like Father wanted. Faces taunted her from every angle. Every overexposed smirk and red eye judged and shamed her. _"Your son was here, here, here,"_ they screeched, leering with shrill laughter.

A math workbook that Tyrion had been helping him with teetered and bent over a hardback yearbook, the last one he would ever have. He'd been worried about keeping good marks to stay on the team once the season started again. Cersei remembered somberly how many hours the two had spent sat at the wooden desk. Her little perfectionist.

_Joffrey was a Lannister, through and through._

The trophy case that Jaime must have emptied still lived on a dusty shelf over the entryway. His favorite soccer ball hung grass stained in the net on the back of the bedroom door. Cersei regarded it silently. _I could leave._ She could walk out, close the door, pretend that he was in there doing homework, watching cartoons, napping. She had half a hundred times these past months.

 _No_.

"Your Grandmama Joanna says that I need to do this," she whispered to no one in particular, at least that she could see. "She says that it will help. The last time that I tried, it didn't go so well." She huffed, anguished. In spite of being a mostly quit smoker up until tonight, her lungs couldn't hold enough air. "I'm not sure I believe her. I don't know if you're here, if you're even anywhere. If you are, then... Then I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

She reached out toward the empty bed before her with the intention to fist her hands in the comforter there, just as she had always done when they were laid up together. She and Jaime had chased rare sleep on this very same mattress back when the room had been a nursery, when Robert left often on leisure trips, when things were simpler. She had laid there with him countless times, fed him from breast, bottle, bowl, comforted him when nightmares came to grip him in the dark, held him as she told him stories, and later on as he read them by himself. Joffrey had always loved his mother. People had murmured all sorts of hateful things about behavioral problems and ADHD and "the spectrum," but their opinions had never mattered. He was beautiful, hers. _He was always happy when he was with me._

She couldn't touch the blanket. It would be cold, just as he had been the last time they had touched, just as the stone where he was interred had been. Feeling that chill, occupying her son's bed alone, would be losing. "I don't know if I can do this alone, baby boy." She blinked back tears, even if no one might be there to see. She had to be strong for him, even in silence. "I haven't been doing so well since you left."

She rushed from the room. She couldn't stand the solitude for another moment. She needed warmth, and there was only one place she'd find it. She opened the door to the next room soundlessly to see him there. Her sweetest cub, her little prince, slept soundly in his favorite pajamas, his little lion union suit. She held her breath as she reached for him. Any other time, the seven gods together couldn't keep Tommen asleep, let alone if someone touched him, but he stayed quiet, still.

She had to make sure he was breathing at that.

She held her last boy in her arms tenderly, rocking him into perfect peace as she made her way back. The air bit her skin, but it was bearable now. "He doesn't understand what happened to you," she sighed. "He still asks sometimes, if you'll come back... But not as often anymore." She sat. Breath left her body. "We're leaving. Starting over, and I know I should be happy, but all I can think about is how you should be coming with us." She held her breath.

"I wanted to save you that day," she croaked. "There was so much blood..." Life-sustaining breath evaded her, them both. "I loved you, Joffrey," she said finally. "Madly." Eyes met the cream carpet, searching for the muddy footprints that would slink about the room there after playtime. She'd hated them back then, but she would have welcomed them to know that he still strode, drew breath. "Your father and I, we both did. I loved him even more after, for giving you to me. I know he never showed you, never developed it...I didn't let him. I'd like to think that if you were here, you'd understand."

Cersei could feel every illusion falling away as she said the words out loud, told her son what she could never convey in life. What was left was too raw. It broke her. Crystal tears tangled in the amber mane of polyester encircling little Tommy's face. She sniffled, at a loss. "Do you remember that story I always told you? About the little pride?"

Little cub stirred in mother's arms, breathing in, finding rest again. She quieted. _I must not disturb him._ "Tell him." Cersei looked up to see Jaime hanging in the doorway. His voice shook. "You should tell him the story, if that helps you." He took her silence as an invitation to enter. She welcomed it. He settled quietly against her, speaking as the fingers of his left hand encircled her ankle. "Cella's out in the car. She got Balerion in her hands and fell out... She won't miss you, not yet." His other hand stroked gently at Tommen's back, soothing him back deeper into sleep. "In the Kingswood," he offered, "there lived a lion and a lioness. They were very happy."

For the first time since Joff had died, she did not shy from Jaime's touch while she thought of him.

"So happy," she continued, "that they knew even when they were children that they were mated to each other. The lioness gave him three beautiful cubs, made from their blood and theirs alone. Two heavenly twins, a sweet brother and sister cub, and a little brother for them both, smaller but quick of wit. The sun rose and set a thousand times over the little pride, for its light lived in their hair."

She smiled, the sort of smile you made while you cried, which she was. It was a terrible risk, but she knew that this time, the last time, she had to tell the story, tell it all, tell it true.

"Sister cub was meant to be mated to a beautiful dragon with purple eyes and silver scales. She and sweet brother loved each other so much, but father lion would never have allowed two little prides like theirs... Sister cub never got to marry the dragon." Cersei frowned. Even after many years, it stung to remember Rhaegar. They would never have had love, but surely he wouldn't have stained her eye as purple as his own, even in moments of fire. "He was taken from her by a great and awful stag, and she was mated to him instead." Breath clotted in her throat like blood. "He hurt sister cub. She stayed because father lion wanted it, wanted grandcubs with antlers budding from their manes, pretty spots littering their coats, to inherit the whole of the Kingswood. So, sister cub stayed, and brother cub protected her as best he could." She paused as she felt Jaime release his breath against her neck. "Sister cub got with a little cub of her own, the sort father had wanted, but he never pounced or hunted or played with his litter mates, never once." She bit her lip. The story had diverged far from any version Joff had ever known. "He disappeared in a wash of blood before he ever drew breath."

Cersei had never been sure if her first pregnancy had been by Robert or Jaime. Jaime liked to think that the babe had been Robert's, that he had weak seed. She liked to think that it had been Jaime's because it was her first.

"Sister cub thought it a sign that the seven gods had intended this, that they had mated her with brother cub before they walked the Wood." She stilled, checking to see if Tommen had stirred, heard. _He will only think it a dream. He will not remember._ The air chilled, stagnating, filling up.

"Sister cub was frightened," Jaime chimed into her silence. He turned to her when she didn't speak. Foreheads pressed flush together, and lips clung in a kiss full of sentiment but lacking sound. It seemed to imbue her with strength.

"She worried about what might happen if the lesser beasts knew about them. 'What will we do?' she wondered. Brother said, 'Sister cub, I will love you.'" She pulled back to look at Jaime as she remembered the words. "And so," Cersei finished, "sister cub gave him three beautiful cubs, just like their mother and father before them. The babes were made from their blood and theirs alone. Sister cub, the lioness of the little pride now, protected them fiercely, at any cost." She rose from the bed, stepping softly, careful not to wake Tommen.

The moon roamed about the walls, bathing them in coruscations. She could have sworn one of them was shaped just like him, gleaming gold and green at the head, bone white, but it must have been a shadow, a reflection, a product of exhaustion, of her head's blood, wormwood and licorice and just the slightest tinge of codeine. _Nothing more._

Still, the room was heavy. It seemed to know.

"The sun rose and set a thousand times over the little pride, for its light lived in their hair." The words were sweet, even in their grief.

_And if the sun lives in me, so does he._

Jaime closed the door. They wished him goodnight for the last time.

When they made it outside, the street stood formidable against the glory of the full moon. Jaime's ebony crossover towed her cherry convertible packed to the brim. All four strapped in safe, little cubs sleeping with hands joined, it was only then that he spoke again.

"You never told me how the story ends."

"That's why it's a happy story," she murmured back, stroking the back of his hand absently as lids fell. "It doesn't end."

Sleep took her, despite efforts otherwise.


	5. Equipoise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Incubus.  
> Conversation.  
> Issue.  
> Castles in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains GRAPHIC content pertaining to child death and night terrors. It may be disturbing to some readers, continue at your own risk.
> 
> I'd also like to point out that the content in the beginning of the chapter is a DREAM, reconstructed from real ("real" fictional) events, so some details may be exaggerated and not entirely medically accurate.
> 
> I wanted to thank you ALL so much for Thrice getting 800 hits and 60 kudos! It may not seem like much, but that is a big milestone for me, and I appreciate it so much.
> 
> I very much apologize about the wait for this chapter! I have had a lot of things going on! I had been trying to keep a series of events in a single chapter, and it is taking me a LONG time to get to that point, so I decided to split that chapter up so that you all have something to read now. I also got very sidetracked by the drabbles, so I decided to take them down from every day to every few days.
> 
> I aim to have that chapter (now six) done in a week or so from this posting.

The water was blue ice, placid, perfect, until it wasn't.

A thousand times she had warned him not to run by the pool. A thousand times the gods had spared him any ill.

This was the thousand and first.

All it took was a slip. Joffrey's laughing mouth met ragged concrete still open. Broken teeth flew from his bleeding face and floated to the surface like sea glass riding the tides. Sansa, who had been chasing Joff, looked on as the water around his immobile form turned redder even than her hair.

That was always when Cersei dove in.

Everyone else simply stared. They were useless, and she hated each one more every night, every time that she had the dream.

When she pulled him out, he was well on his way to turning as blue as the water. Breath had been pulled from his body by the Stranger's kiss, but Cersei never gave up. In the frenzy and the rage and the blood, she almost couldn't remember. Even now, for the hundredth time, she had to show herself the way.

_Thirty chest compressions, two rescue breaths._

She bloodied her own mouth again and again as it interlocked with his purpling lips in the most morbid sort of kiss.

The water erupted from his throat. She swallowed a little despite her efforts. There were manifold aromas there, bitter breath, copper death creeping forth, something tauntingly sweet, _Did he sneak icing from the corner of the cake?_ biting chorine, the taste of lung fluid that she had no name for, no name but plenty of memory.

Breath came next.

_He is safe._

He was not safe.

That was always how Jaime had found her once he finally made it inside, hysterical, lips like open veins, curled about their son's barely living body like a repugnant vampire. A multitude of things happened around her, things that she had not seen the day of the incident, only on video. She watched from far away as the caterer dropped Joffrey's nameday cake onto the grass where it crumbled like clay and asphalt. Grass as green as his eyes smoldered in the candle flames. Little Cella hid behind the curtain of Sansa's wet hair hanging like a shredded house banner between them. Tyrion looked on with a face of shock that he never wore, horrified. Father shielded a screaming Tommen from watching his brother die. Mother stayed on the phone with the operator even after the paramedics arrived. Jaime begged their son to speak to him, though his last noises were little more than gurgles without any teeth. He went white with rage screaming at the first responders when they told him "immediate family only."

None of this registered.

The Cersei in the dream had eyes only for the blood snaking down her son's face as she held him, his split lips and broken nose. It was an unseen brain bleed that killed him, but this that killed her. There was a great mess, and near naked as she was in the metallic gold bikini, her skin was the first surface that the fluid found. It crawled about her breasts, slicking the fabric there until it was sticky and crimson, hanging indecently like a fillet of flayed skin, and further, settling into the depressions in the skin of her stomach that had come from giving life to him, the life that he was losing. It coated her thighs in terrible tendrils akin to when she had bled out the babe come before him.

She'd raged redder than any of the venous sin that clothed her when she had been ripped away from him. Without fail, no matter how the dream might evolve, this was always the same. She saw, but could not hear, Jaime talking to her as he pulled her by the hands to the locker room, locked the entrance and exit doors, turned on the shower. She couldn't hear his words over Tommen's screaming, _"Joffy, Joffy,"_ overridden only by Joff's racing heartbeat. Even though both had surely ceased by now, in the dream, they never left her. He scrambled, ripping the bathing suit in two as he tore it from her body, stripping along with her. _He is looking for body wash,_ she remembered amidst the chaos of her swirling brain. Jaime had kept his stone face until that had set him off.

_"Not a bar of soap in the fucking place."_

Tragedy was often like that.

 _"Give up,"_ she wanted to scream, or maybe, _"it won't help,"_ because it never did, but she could not. Her tongue was an infant's, too slick, numb. It knew no words. Her mouth formed them, and his, but no sound traveled. It bounced around the walls of her brain instead. His hands turned the shower as high as it would go, but nothing burned so harshly as the shame streaming over her, the blood and the tears.

She never heard words but could always read lips. He was clearly frantic watching her lose herself in front of his very eyes, and so, as he did every time, his lips formed the words of the story that they had told each other since they were children, the one that she had told Joffrey most every night, that she would never tell him again. He told the story true, in the language that they had invented when they were young rather than the Common Tongue. She _tried, tried, tried_ to hear, to hold on to the image of herself as a mother, leonine, human, otherwise.

_What is a mother without a son?_

They scrubbed and scrubbed, and the water ruddied like a sea of death, but the stains never washed away.

Jaime could never see that they stayed. Perhaps that was the worst part. He continued through the motions like everything was as it should have been, no matter how loudly she tried to tell him otherwise. Her mouth made no noise. There was only the pulse. He dragged her from the shower to the sinks. Bittersweet footprints glazed white tile.

She leaned back, doing her best to relax under his hands, unbraiding her hair. Here was the soap he sought, and he lathered it into her bloodied mane, no longer yellow with riches but greened with chlorine, living, shining death.

She blanched when the story came to an end. _"The sun rose and set a thousand times over the little pride, for its light lived in their hair."_ Their son's _heart_ pulsed through her hair as ichor hung in the sink water. There was no more sun to be had. The beating only stopped as broken ivory came untangled from the braid and clattered to the porcelain where she sat, all but blending, save for the tinge of red.

That was always when she lost her grip on reality, sought one around his hips, when she saw her son's last tooth, so much bigger than his first. That was always when Robert laughed above her, _"you couldn't save him,"_ every name he had ever called her out of her own seething through the air, _"idiot, bitch, whore, Lyanna, Lyannalyannalyanna,"_ whooshing in and out of ears, nearly cooking her boiling brain.

The name was only fitting with her hair blackened with blood.

Her fingers only tightened, pulling him closer, desperate to hear their noises over the sounds. She never could. _"No,"_ Jaime always mouthed, lips trembling, never seeing the brutal beast. It almost brought her back to earth, the sting of rejection. _"We shouldn't, it's not right."_

"Nothing about this is right," she'd answer. It was the only time she spoke, the only sound that ever drowned out the horrors.

Their bodies shook and wracked for the next two minutes and twelve seconds. Cersei always knew how long it took by the clock posted on the wall. She watched it, not him, and she especially never dared look straight ahead to the adjoining mirror. She'd made that mistake once. Jaime's body was only so big. It could not conceal every horror cloaking her bones.

It ended by the grace of friction alone.

This time, that friction echoed with his hand in hers, squeezing, stroking. His voice broke the illusion, and her eyes flew open.

"Cersei."

The overhead light coming from the sun visor open above her was blinding. Her own heartbeat pulsed through her head now, slowing to a dull ache. _Can I have a hangover just waking up from a nap?_ She turned to the cup holder next to them and found a bottle of water, gulping needily.

"I'm awake."

"Yes," he hesitated. "Yes, you are."

She slammed the visor shut, annoyed. _Shit. Too loud._ Anxious eyes moved to see if Tommen or Myrcella had stirred. They still slumbered in peace in the backseat what seemed leagues away.

Jaime's eyes were already back on the road. It was dark, but she was sure he looked like he might cry. "You had the dream again."

"I always do."

His lips were a tight line, defiant of whatever words might beat on the other side in hopes of exit.

"Was I making noise?" The silence needed filling.

He shook his head silently. Fingers tapped the buttons on the steering wheel, placing the car into cruise control. Not a soul junketed the roadway at this time of night. Their only company came in the form of headlights on the opposite side of the street, straggling taxicabs carrying King's Landing's most eager partygoers as wasteful cargo. It was a sempiternal darkness, a secret for only the two to know.

"I did 70 in a 30 to get to you that day, Cersei." Their gazes cemented together. "I never should have let Father keep me for a half day at work, I..."

 _He is blaming himself. For Joff... For what I did._ She wished he wouldn't do that. She had done it enough for both of them, much and more.

"You never told me," she murmured, looking straight ahead into the great cloak of filth before them.

"No," he agreed. "I didn't want to tell you... I didn't want to make it about me when so much of it has fallen on you."

"Joffrey was yours," she acquiesced.

"I was hardly a father to him," said Jaime.

"You wanted to be," she whispered dryly. "In the beginning. Another thing you're angry about, I'm sure."

"It's not like that," he bit back, gaze leaving the road to regard her. "It's just... If I had been there, if I could have done something, things might not be... You'd have your son with you where he belongs, and we'd be together, and--"

"You're saying we're not together," she interrupted.

"I wasn't... I want to be. I always wanted to be." His eyes were shattering stone. " _You_ tell _me_ what's been going on these past months, in your mind."

"I ...I don't know," she admitted seriously. "It's very complicated. Does all of that matter in the scheme of things?" She ignored the squeezing anxiety at her throat. _Of course it matters._ "We've always been together. We'll always be together. We're the only two people in the world."

The words seemed to glue the gems back together, as he was nodding his head now. She reached to the floor and fished the pack and lighter from the overnight bag there.

"I thought you quit."

"You're stressing me out," she sighed. "And besides, it's not my pack. It's his." Suddenly, his hand was out next to her. "I thought _you_ quit."

"Half a dozen times."

That was true. She could scarcely argue.

She held out the lighter to him, but he only shook his head, pointing to his mouth and then her own. She rolled her eyes, stashing the cigarette between her teeth and lowering the window, grateful for the quiet air tonight. When her own cigarette was lit, she held out one for him. Their faces inched together until ends touched and embers struck as they inhaled.

"Coffin nail kiss," Jaime murmured around the filter, breathing out into her parted lips. _We will leave this world together, as we once came into it._ A puff of smoke floated up from Cersei's face and out of the window in what might have been a cough if she weren't laughing. Gasper kisses had been their favorite as teenagers. They were much more acceptable in public than the real kind, of course. Everyone dismissed cigarette kisses as a _twin thing,_ except Mother.

Mother knew otherwise.

Cersei wouldn't think of that, not just now. She hoped that Mother didn't, either. She'd all but repressed the look on Joanna's face when she'd walked in on the two of them.

 _"We were only playing. It's the first time,"_ Cersei had assured, _"and the last."_

Thrice a lie, if the children were any indication, but she needn't know that. Mother had never caught them after that. Cersei had made sure of it.

Jaime tossed his jet black smartphone into her lap. "Tell Tyrion you're safe."

Eyes widened. Tyrion was the last person she wanted to speak with now. She didn't quite trust him, even if she still cared about him under everything. Just a little.

_He should have let me tell Jaime myself._

"What are you waiting for?" Jaime was smirking next to her. "It's the same phone you have. Surely you remember how to open it? Yours worked just fine yesterday."

His jape irked her. It had _worked just fine_ until she'd thrown it to the floor in a rage, typing, erasing, typing again, wanting to call, text him _"come over,"_ recording voice messages without sending them, deciding against it all a hundred times. Cersei wondered what those messages might be like, what typos she'd made, what angers she'd transcribed.

_Drunk texts are hardly my style._

She hardly dared place her thumb over the home button for fear that he'd have taken her fingerprint out. _It won't open._ Surely that was why he was doing this, so that she would know that she was locked out, had to earn this privilege back.

It opened. Seamlessly.

The background was the same, too. It was a picture of the four of them during Tommen's first trip to the zoo last year, the one where she'd dared to steal a kiss upon his cheek. _His favorite picture._ Cersei couldn't help it for a moment. She grinned like an idiot against the instrument of death between her teeth. Shaking that off, she opened the messenger app, finding the Little Brother thread and scrolling to today's messages. She didn't dare read further back.

_Received 09:57 PM: You and sis off reconciling your differences somewhere?_

_Sent 10:02 PM: That's not funny._

_Received 10:03 PM: No, it's not really. Mother's worried sick._

_Sent 10:03 PM: Worried? About Cersei?_

_Sent 10:03 PM: ...I thought she was with you?_

_Received 10:03 PM: She never showed._

_Received 10:05 PM: Father is going on about wanting to see Tommen, too._

_Received 10:06 PM: "Robert could have brought the children if she is feeling ill," he says. I don't think he knows that Cersei is the only thing keeping you from killing each other?_

_Sent 10:06 PM: Keeping me from killing him, you mean._

_Sent 10:07 PM: She'd better not be where I think she is._

_Sent 10:08 PM: Is HE there?_

Cersei felt her head throb again at the last message. That stung. Badly. She almost said, but she was snooping a little, after all.

_Received 10:08 PM: Please. Like she would blow off Mother and Father for a fuck._

_Received: 10:08 PM: Besides, she told me she wanted to talk to you tonight._

_Received 10:09 PM: I think she's still in love with you. The Crone knows why._

_Received 10:18 PM: J._

_Received 10:25 PM: Talk to me._

Was Tyrion on _her_ side after all?

_Sent 10:28 PM: T._

_Sent 10:30 PM: No._

_Sent 10:30 PM: I REALLY don't want to talk about this with you._

_Sent 10:32 PM: Did you try calling her?_

_Received 10:32 PM: Of course I did. I thought she just didn't want to talk to me._

_Received 10:35 PM: She could have turned her ringer off. She could be ignoring us. You know how she gets, Jaime._

_Sent 10:35 PM: She's still not answering the phone for you either? I left two voicemails and everything._

_Sent 10:36 PM: Shit._

_Sent 10:36 PM: You should have said sooner. She could be hurt._

_Sent 10:40 PM: I'll try again. Rule of three, right?_

_Received 10:41 PM: I don't know what that means._

_Received 10:41 PM: Is that a twin thing?_

_Sent 10:41 PM: No. No, you wouldn't._

_Sent 10:44 PM: Okay. Three calls, no answer? No fucking way. She wouldn't just ignore me._

_Sent 10:45 PM: Yeah. I'm going over there. And I'm bringing Kingslayer and Oathbreaker with me._

Cersei's eyes drifted to the glove compartment ahead of her, locked by key, which it never was. Were the guns in there, right in front of her?

_Sent 10:45 PM: If that motherfucker put his hands on her again, he's going to regret it._

_Received 10:50 PM: Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Jaime._

_Received 10:50 PM: Calm down. Don't do anything stupid._

_Received 10:50 PM: Listen, Shae is bugging me. She wants to go home, so I have to drive now. PLEASE do not do something stupid like I know you will. Tell me what happens._

_Received 11:15 PM: I'm home. Is everything alright?_

_Received 11:30 PM: Jaime?_

_Received 11:47 PM: Hey. Is everything ok? Nobody died, did they?_

_Three Missed Calls: Little Brother._

_Received 12:04 AM: CALL ME._

"Feeling nosy, are we?" His brow arched straight up. "I asked you to text Tyrion, not to read our entire conversation."

She looked up, caught. "I..."

"Don't apologize when you don't mean it," he came back, looking to the road. "You don't, and you shouldn't. You can read everything in there if you want. I may have written some things you won't like, but nothing I shouldn't have... I haven't been with anyone else, you do know that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," she answered with a hint of relief.

That was going to be the end of that. Cersei couldn't stand the thought of brother with someone else. She didn't want to admit that she had thought of it at all, that she would have looked for anything, but who knew how long she might've read if he hadn't interrupted? She set to the task of answering the messages as Jaime had asked, desperate to be distracted. She turned on the overhead light again and snapped a photo of her scowling face, sending it.

 _Sent 02:47 AM: Sorry to disappoint you, but I lived. Barely._ That was true. _The babies are fine. Jaime, too. I've been keeping him a little busy._

_Received 02:47 AM: Shit. I fell asleep._

_Received 02:47 AM: You wound me, dear sister. Danger is becoming on you._

Tyrion wasn't half as subtle as he thought. She could hear the smirk in the words as she read them.

_Received 02:48 AM: Busy with what?_

When she looked up, Jaime was inhaling. She noticed now that his smoke was disappearing twice as quickly as her own. "You're smoking fast." It was nearly a stump now. "You're not hooked on gaspers again?"

"They help," he admitted. "I have been having nightmares of my own."

Cersei's face was blank as a sheet of paper, hard as a sheet of rock. "About?"

His only answer was to take a drag.

"Jaime."

Smog left brother's mouth in clouds, greying the tepid air. She waved it away.

"I wish you'd never watched that tape," he said finally.

_So do I._

It had made her nightmares infinitely worse. Rather than rushing to help, one of the guests at Joffrey's nameday party had counted herself blessed by this ill and recorded the catastrophe unfolding before her, knowing that the footage would be worth a fortune.

It had taken Father a million unmarked bills and five kilos of dragon dust to keep her from selling the snuff film to Varys. _Twice_ a fool, she'd dared to cross him after, pushing the dope in Lannister territory and leaking the copy that she hadn't erased.

Father'd refused to tell Cersei who the woman was, only that she wouldn't disturb them again.

_"No one invades the lion's den, and no one dishonors our legacy with impunity. She lost her life in a manner much worse than your son."_

It was enough. It had to be.

"...Did you?"

"Yes," he gasped, snapping what was left of his exhale back between his lips, "but that's not what I dream about." The world slowed as he pulled into the exit. "We're almost home. You should ash."

She wanted to chide him for telling her what to do, but thought better of it. _He is not Robert,_ she reminded herself. _He is only making a suggestion._

She ashed.

The phone vibrated. _Oh, right. Tyrion._  
  
_Received 02:49 AM: You there?_

_Sent 02:49 AM: Yes. I'm here. White knighting. You know Jaime. And some other things._

_Sent 02:50 AM: Don't worry about it. It's just been a crazy night._

The road crept along. Glittering embers lit the world as hazy coughs colored it with sound. Soon enough, they were pulling into the circular driveway. The world felt infinitely darker, yet it was calm, welcoming. She woke up Myrcella first, shushing her and gesturing for her to follow as she carried Tommen inside. He immediately expressed that he wanted to spend the rest of the night with his sister _and their kitties and, "yes, Queenie has to stay, too, or she'll get lonely."_ Cersei knew that, any other time, it would not do to let them, to condone the sort of behavior that had cost she and Jaime so much. She had already caught them sneaking from two beds to one for naps more than once, but that was nothing, wasn't it? They were three and four.

_Is it bound to happen? They are so close already._

_It's not like we could stop them._

_What am I saying? Surely they're nothing like us. That's why the world hates people like us, because so few understand._

_I'm tired. Delirious, even. To entertain the idea._

It felt as though the seven gods together were warring at her ears about nearly nothing, at least of consequence. Her ears rang with something she could not name.

 _Let them sleep together,_ she decided, dismissing the sea of possibilities. _Just for tonight._

"Are you alright?" she whispered as they settled into the bed. "Do you want me to sleep with you?"

"No, I have my Cella," Tommen answered simply, shaking his white-gold hair. She freed it fully from the hat of the lion pajamas, stroking his cheek. _My sweet boy. My only boy._ "Why are we here, Mama?"

Cersei sucked in a breath. How could she possibly explain all of this to him?

"We're on an adventure, sweetling," she said, doing her best to muster a smile. "A great, big adventure. Sometimes, adventures don't start when we're ready for them."

"An adventure?" The last light in her boy's little body traveled to widening eyes. They glowed with enchantment. "Like the dragon kings in the old stories? The ones with hair like me?"

Myrcella's Targaryen obsession was rubbing off on her little brother, it seemed. _Throne_ had to be to blame. They hardly watched anything else, but Cersei never minded. They _were_ taking an early interest in history, after all. Rhaenyra was Myrcella's favorite. _I wonder which one his might be._

She could hardly blame them for their infatuations. The purple-eyed creatures were fascinatingly beautiful, almost inhuman. She'd never tell Jaime, but sometimes, Cersei liked to think that Tommen was the son that Rhaegar didn't live to give her, that his wispy white hair was her dragon prince come back to her after all.

"Yes," she answered with a little laugh, sniffing against the tear threatening to trickle through the makeup masking her wounded skin. "Just like them."

"Will there be enemies with big scary swords? Monsters?"

She almost frowned at that. _Did_ he understand? "No, my love. No monsters. No one's going to hurt you." She took his hand into hers, burying their fingers in the plush fur of the stuffed dragon between Tomm and his sister. "Dragon's breath will chase them all away."

 _And the Cleganes._ Half the men in Westeros would doubtless prefer death by dragon to death by Mountain.

"Will we stay? Here, with Uncle Jayjay?" His little lips scrunched up, as though he were thinking as hard as three-year-olds might.

She hadn't expected that. "Would you like that, little lion?"

"Yah, I think so," he nodded absently, throwing his arm around his big sister, already fast asleep next to them. "I love my Jayjay," he continued, "and my Cella, and my you." This was Tommen's latest phase, the _my my my._ Cersei found it rather endearing, being called _his_ in the little voice. Even if he couldn't speak too well yet, his words always held more sentiment than want. He preferred people over things. _Like his father._

Half the time, she didn't even dare think it, but here, she could.

"You love your _everyone_."

"No," he protested. "Not everyone."

 _I wonder what he means._ She wondered, but did not ask, deigning to give him peace.

He fought sleep valiantly, if one could be valiant and silly, but little cub's eyes drooped, shielding him from the darkness surrounding them. "Nightnight, Mama."

"Goodnight, baby boy. And I love you, too." She kissed them both, waiting to close the door until she was sure that he'd found sleep.

With the door between them, she regarded the phone again, retrieving it from her pocket. Sure enough, a notification beat red against Tommen's face in the background photo like a wound.

_Received 02:52 AM: You left Robert, didn't you? You went home with him._

_Received 02:52 AM: Father is going to murder you. BOTH of you._

_Received 02:53 AM: And I know what "other things" are, Cersei. Don't be cute._

_Received 03:12 AM: Bed?_

Cersei's hands shook at the message, blurring the oversaturated screen. She had hardly thought of Father in the haze of the drink, the sickness that had followed, the somber cold of Joffrey's room, the ecstasy that Jaime had lavished upon her, even in frailty. _I was wrong to doubt him._ This thought left her more confused than anything. She knew that staying in a house with someone that had all but assaulted her four-year-old daughter was not an option. _That is abundantly clear. What other choice did I have? Father so loves his legacy, he should see that._

Except that he wouldn't. They _needed_ the Baratheons. Only for a few more months, but the need had not disappeared in the home stretch of the thing.

Since Joffrey had died, Father was perhaps the only part of her family whose loyalties and motivations she had never questioned, but Tyrion's thoughts were beginning to reflect in her own. She wondered if perhaps he was the first one she should have worried about. And Tyrion's care for her wellbeing was awfully uncharacteristic. Was he even half so hateful and bold when she wasn't around? Could Jaime be _right_? Was the little beast not half so bad as she had thought after all?

Had she been wrong all along? Had her _blood_ been wrong?

The witch's words rang in her mind. Copper burned her lungs as the words on the screen yellowed and stared back at her like eyes.

_"Your singer's soul is taken, silver changed for black. Three babes you shall bare, the color they shall lack. Crowns of gold weigh heavy on filthy heads. Before truebirth, one falsehood takes his place among the dead. From your belly shall they tumble onto a crimson field, and they shall wash the world in a sea of blood where pride and life are stolen. Should you save the one and yield, the other may survive, and your fetid line shall plague the Kingdoms forever with sinful bellies swollen. Elsewise, the valonqar, the second son who loves you none, shall have your heart, and all it holds when broken."_

She had scarcely taken it seriously until Joff, until she had realized that it was coming true. She had never distrusted Tyrion until then, had she? She'd been a bit repulsed by his twisted looks and impish ways, but not for true, not more than anyone else. His apparent affections for her children, the wedge he had driven between she and Jaime, these were all sure signs that he would be her undoing. It had all but become a new reality, a comfort amidst grief, a place to put the rage.

But what if that wasn't true? What if the second son were anyone else? Cersei could recall any number of men that had scared her, the way that she had become convinced that they were out for her with little effort and perhaps even less reason. Viserys. Stannis. 

_Jaime. He was a beast the first time I didn't say it back._

She pushed that out of her mind. Perhaps it was the exhaustion, the alcohol, something more, but part of Cersei wondered what that might be like, a world where she and Tyrion could be happy again, where his wit could be an asset to the family rather than a source of fear.

Her fingers were faster than her inhibitions.

_Sent 03:20 AM: Now. Love you._

_Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Why did I send that? I cannot believe I just sent that._

_I'm never drinking again. It turns me into such a fool._

_...Maybe not never._

_Tyrion is going to laugh at me. He hates me._

Oh, but she was wrong. It was worse than that.

_Received 03:22 AM: Love you too, big brother._

She decided against replying, thinking that it would either end in more of his infamous snark or, worse, something that might break her heart. _Do I really treat Tyrion so badly that he assumes Jaime is the only person in this world that loves him?_ That would be the straw to break her back, if she let it. She would not, could not, entertain this particular stress now. She held the image of Tommen's sleepy smile in her mind as she climbed the stairs, willing away the wooziness that had all but set into her bones.

A smile of her own sluiced its way onto her face as she met with the familiar doorway of Jaime's old bedroom, conjoined to hers from years ago. _I imagine that one may remain rather lonely while I am here._ Her clothes were half shed before the door closed. Here, she felt free, free to relax in ways that she hadn't in far too long. She took a moment to regard herself in the floor length mirror at the edge of the room. She saw gore, and she saw survival, as though death could be beautiful, a bit more beautiful because it hadn't come just yet. It pleased her to notice Jaime's tooth marks ridging and purpling up and down her body for her viewing pleasure, just as she'd told him she'd wanted. Precious bruises wound over her stomach and thighs like lavender vines.

It seemed to please Jaime, too. His eyes raked over her form with abandon, even after he'd been caught looking. "Haven't had enough, sweet sister?"

"Please," she murmured back through chagrin and clenched teeth. "I have not been able to sleep naked in quite some time." Their eyes met. Both understood why. "I hope you won't mind."

There went that same old crooked smile. He didn't mind one bit.

The first thing she did when she made her way into Jaime's bed was reach for her pack. He eyed her quizzically, almost disappointed. "You get naked just to smoke."

"It's a lucky gasper," she explained quietly, flipping the gold pack open for him to see. _At least he always smoked Laurels, like me. Robert's cigarettes are the only thing golden about him._ One jack remained in the pack, loose tobacco side up. You had to smoke the upside down one last for good luck, if you got one. It was a _rule_. "I figured we could use a bit of good fortune... That we could steal it from him."

He raised an eyebrow at that but ultimately opened the window before ambling over to her, bringing the ashtray with him. They clasped left hands around the jack, the filter set between two sets of fingers, and enjoyed themselves without speaking much at first, preferring to occupy themselves in other ways. Rings rippled through crisp air, and they romped on the bed in a scuffle over who got the next puff, wrestling in uninhibited glee until hot ash met Cersei's exposed skin. He soothed the burn over with the cool glass of the tray, warming the welt again with his tongue, and soon enough she'd found her smile again.

The next drag was hers. It was only fair.

She held his face as they shotgunned and giggled together, smoke billowing from between their clasped mouths, and they pecked and chewed at each other's lips a little after that, all but neglecting the cigarette until the creeping fever of combustion made their joined fingers hot. She set everything aside on the nightstand as he matched her state of undress, and they settled into plush blankets beneath the crimson canopy, foreheads pressed together, limbs tangled.

"It's going to be a long road, isn't it?" she said into his skin. "Until things are like before."

"Yes," he admitted, twirling a wisp of hair around his index finger. The motion was oddly soothing set beside his words. "Long, winding, bumpy... but the wheels are turning now."

They kissed, kissed goodnight and welcome home, until it grew into something more, until they were christening the new-old bedroom all over again. Every cell of the one clamored for that of the other. It was simple, sweet, not something the two were quite used to anymore. Their bodies spoke when they did not. _I am comfortable, I am safe, I belong to you, with you._ Names and sighs and promises leapt from one set of lips to the other as they rocked together, finding perfection. And then came a word at once from each throat that only the two knew, and it was "I love you."

They slipped into sleep swiftly and quietly after that, and for once, it was not sullied with loss, Robert laughing, Tommen crying, the two shaking on the locker room sink, blood staining her greening mane.

She dreamt a long, sweet dream where Jaime was her husband and their son was still alive.


End file.
